The University of Oxford is preparing systems and services to enable members of the university to manage research data produced by its scholars. Much of the work has been carried out under the Jisc-funded Damaro project. This project draws together existing nascent services, adds new systems and services to ‘fill the gaps’ and provides a wide-ranging infrastructure. Development comprises four parallel strands: endorsement of a university research data management policy; training and guidance in research data management; technical infrastructure; and future sustainability. A key element of the technical infrastructure is DataFinder, a catalogue of Oxford research data outputs. DataFinder’s core purposes are to record the existence of Oxford datasets, enable their discovery, and provide details of their location. DataFinder will record metadata about Oxford research data, irrespective of location, discipline or format, and is viewed by the university as a crucial hub for the university’s Research Data Management (RDM) infrastructure.

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The University of Oxford’s institutional repository for data, Oxford University Research Archive (ORA)-Data, was launched in May 2015. This article describes a current-state assessment of ORA-Data in relation to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) policy framework on research data and offers some future directions in implementing a more systemic lifecycle approach to research data curation at the University of Oxford with reference to the Digital Curation Centre’s Curation Lifecycle Model. Insights into the attitudes and requirements of EPSRC-funded researchers at the university in relation to research data management, from a survey we conducted, are explored. Descriptive metadata and identifiers, preservation actions, access, use and reuse and community engagement are considered. ORA-Data is positioned within the wider context of Oxford’s research data management roadmap.

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