Data management plan

A research proposal is based on the six steps of the research process. In addition, the research proposal1 also includes information about the sponsor, the planning and a reference list. Funding agencies increasingly expect to find information about the management of the expected research data in the proposal as well. The research proposal then includes a so-called data paragraph or it has a Data Management Plan (DMP) as an appendix: an agreement about which research data are stored where, when and in which format (organising, describing, managing, archiving, and accessing data). 

 

We now know that researchers/research groups are increasingly expected to produce a DMP or data paragraph, but what should be in it and how do you write such a document? 

Some inspiration: 

  • Institutions in the US and the UK have developed a DMP tool5 which helps researchers write their plans. Researchers can create several versions of a DMP, store them and keep them up-to-date. They take the requirements of different funding agencies into account. The DMPs can be exported into various formats 
  • The DCC guide6 
  • NSF indicates what should be included in a DMP: which data are produced and how you want to manage them7 
  • KNAW’s data paragraph directions8 give an overview of the contents of a data paragraph: 
    - digital permanence (where and when are the research data permanently stored?) 
    - open access (when will the research data be freely available? If the data are not available or if their availability is limited: why?) 
    - metadata (if the metadata are not made public: why not?) 
                   




At the moment of writing this course, the concept of a data paragraph is still very new. KNAW cannot give any worked-out examples yet9. Within the project CARDS a number of DMPs have been produced. This is the DMP of SPLITS10 (Splitting and Clustering Grammatical Information). To give another example: the Data Management Sample Plan11 of a project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gives a good impression of what a DMP might look like. 

 

1. Plooij, F. (2011). Onderzoek doen. Pearson Education.
2. KNAW. (2011). Open access en digitale duurzaamheid voor KNAW onderzoekers. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from http://www.knaw.nl/Content/Internet_KNAW/thematisch/bestanden/knaw-flyer-open-access-nl.pdf
3. NSF. (2011). NSF Data Management Plan Requirements. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmp.jsp  
4. DCC. (2011). Funders' data management requirements. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-management-plans/funders-requirements
5. University of California Curation Center. (2011). DMP Tool. Guidance and Resources for your Data Management Plan. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from https://dmp.cdlib.org/
6. DCC. (2011). How to develop a data management and sharing plan. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from http://www.dcc.ac.uk/webfm_send/486
7. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from 
http://psd.uchicago.edu/NSF%20Data%20Management%20Plan%20Template.pdf
8. KNAW. (2011). Handvat voor het opstellen van een KNAW-dataparagraaf. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9Ccd1URnalvMjhjOGMzMjQtNjEyOC00NDI0LTgzYWYtNGY5Zjc3YTdiNTA0
9. Contact met Rik Janssen, oktober 2011
10. Schoots, F., Verhaar, P. (2011). Splitting and Clustering Grammatical Information (SPLITS). Data Management Plan, version 0.4. 
Retreived 22-12-2011 from
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9Ccd1URnalvYmEyNGU4MDQtZDk4MS00MDYyLWFlMDEtYWYwMTM2NzU2MzUx
11. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2011). Sample Data Management plan. Retrieved 8-12-2011 from https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B9Ccd1URnalvNjc4OWViZjUtNWU1MC00NzY1LTg1NDktNzExMjA5YTI5MDIy 

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