Creating a Data Management Plan is your opportunity to think through and plan for different stages in the data lifecycle. The Data Management Plan outlines your needs and goals for collecting, organizing, documenting, preserving, and distributing the data associated with your research project.
Key Questions to Consider
Questions that should be addressed by a data management plan:
What research data will be considered?
- What is the purpose of the research?
- What is the data?
- How and in what format will the data be collected?
- Is the data numerical data, image data, text sequences, modeling data, etc.?
- How long will the data be collected?
- How often will the data change?
- Who is responsible for managing the data?
- Who will ensure that the data management plan is carried out?
What policies (funding, institutional, and legal) apply to the data?
- Are you using data that someone else produced? If so
- Where is the data form?
- What permissions do you require to re-use the data?
- Are there policies (funding, institutional, or legal) which might impact the use of the data or guide your use of the data?
What data management practices (backups, storage, access control, archiving) will be used?
- What documentation will you be creating in order to make the data understandable by other researchers?
- Are you using metadata that is standard to your filed?
- How will metadata be managed and stored?
- What file formats will be used?
- Will the file formats conform to an open standard and/or are they proprietary?
- What directory and file naming convention will be used?
- What are the local storage procedures?
- Will the data require secure storage?
- What are your backup procedures?
- What tools or software are required to read or view the data?
What facilities and equipment will be required (hard-disk space, backup server, and repository)?
- How much storage space will you need?
- Will you require server/storage support?
- Who will provided the server/storage space?
- Will you need backup servers/storage?
- Can you place your data in a disciplinary or institutional repository?
Who will own and have access to the data?
- Who has the right to manage this data? Is it the PI, student, lab, S&T, or funding agency?
- Who holds intellectual property rights for the data and other associated information?
Who will be responsible for each aspect of the plan?
- Who is responsible for the plan as a whole and each aspect? Is it the PI, student, lab, S&T, or funding agency?
- Who will be responsible for the data after the research is complete? For how long?
How will data reuse be enabled?
- What data will be shared? When and where?
- Does sharing the data raise privacy, ethical, or confidentiality concerns?
- Do you have a plan to anonymize data if needed?
- Who holds the intellectual property rights for the data and other information created by the project?
- Will any copyrighted or licensed materials be used?
- Do you have permission to use or/disseminate any licensed or copyrighted materials?
- Are there any patent or technology-licensing-related restrictions on data sharing associated with your grant?
- Will the research be published in a journal that requires the underlying data to accompany the articles?
- Will you permit re-use, redistribution, or creation of new tools, services, data sets, or products (derivatives)?
- Will commercial use be allowed?
How will long-term preservation be ensured after the original research is completed?
- How will you archive your data?
- Will you be storing it in an archive or repository for long-term access? If not how do you plan to preserve access to your data?
- Is a discipline repository available?
- Have you considered deposing you data in S&T repository, Scholars Mine?
- How will you prepare your data for preservation or data sharing? Will the data need to be anonymized or converted to a more stable file format?
- How long should the data be retained? 3-5 years, 10 years, or forever?
Getting Started with the DMP Tool
The DMP Tool is a free, open-source, application that helps researchers create data management plans (DMPs). These plans are required by many funding agencies as part of the grant proposal submission process. The DMP Tool provides a click-through wizard for creating a DMP that complies with funder requirements. It also has direct links to funder websites, help text for answering questions, and data management best practices resources.
With the DMP Tool University Libraries provides:
- Customization tools for our researchers
- A mechanism for registering a DMP ID
- Best practice guidance to ensure plans are structured and optimized
- Participating organizations can provide feedback on plans
- A click-through wizard for creating a DMP that complies with funder requirements
- Direct links to funder websites, help text for answering questions, and Research Data Management (RDM) best practice resources