Your tasks: Data management plan

What should you write in a Data Management Plan (DMP)?

Description

A DMP should address a broad range of data management aspects, regardless of funder or institution specific templates. It is important to be aware of the current best practices in DMPs before starting one. For more generic information about data management planning, see also our Planning page.

Considerations

Common topics of a DMP are:

• General information about the project.
• Description of the datasets that will be used and generated.
• Description of metadata, ontologies and data documentation.
• Storage solutions, data security and preservation strategy that will be adopted during and after the project.
• How, when and where data will be shared and published.
• Costs and resources needed for data management.
• Ethical and legal issues, such as privacy, intellectual property and licences.

Solutions

• This website includes best practices and guidelines about the different aspects of research data management that should be covered in a DMP.
• Core requirements for DMP have been described by Science Europe.
• Consider the DMP Common Standard from the Research Data Alliance as a reference data model for organising the different topics.

What template should you use to draft your DMP?

Description

A number of DMP templates are currently available, originating from different funding agencies or institutions. Moreover, there are ongoing efforts to develop templates for machine-actionable DMPs.

Considerations

• Each funding agency could require or recommend a specific DMP template.
• Your institution could require and recommend a DMP template.
• Template could be presented as list of questions in text format or in a machine-actionable format.

Solutions

• Consult the documentation of your funding agency or institution, or contact them to figure out if they require or recommend a DMP template.
• A core DMP template has been provided by Science Europe.
• Read DMP guidelines from the Horizon Europe Programme Guide and the Horizon Europe Annotated Model Grant Agreement. The Horizon Europe DMP template can be downloaded from the Reference Documents page, by clicking on “Templates & forms”, “Project reporting templates” and then on “Data management plan (HE)”.
• Consider adopting the DMP Common Standard model from the Research Data Alliance if you want to produce a machine-actionable DMP template.

What tool should you use to write your DMP?

Description

DMPs can be written offline by using the downloaded template in a text document format. However, a number of web-based DMP tools are currently available that greatly facilitate the process, as they usually contain several DMP templates and provide guidance in interpreting and answering the questions. Some of the tools also allow collaboration on a DMP and track the progress as it is a living document.

Considerations

• Check what DMP tool is recommended or provided by your funding agency.
• Check what DMP tool is recommended or provided by your institute.
• Make sure that the tool you choose includes the DMP template that you need.
• If you want to produce a machine-actionable DMP, you need to make sure the tool you choose allows exporting the DMP in a machine-actionable format (e.g. JSON) rather than only as a PDF document.

Solutions

• Use the tool suggested by your funding agency or institution.
• Choose one of the following online DMP tools (ordered alphabetically).
  • Data Stewardship Wizard: publicly available open-source tool to collaboratively compose data management plans through smart and customisable questionnaires with FAIRness evaluation.
  • DMP Canvas Generator: this tool, mainly for researchers in Switzerland, is based on a questionnaire following the structure of the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) instructions for DMP submission. Each Swiss High School can develop a specific template/canvas.
  • DAMAP: tool for machine actionable Data Management Plans.
  • DMP Canvas Generator: this tool, mainly for researchers in Switzerland, is based on a questionnaire following the structure of the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) instructions for DMP submission. Each Swiss High School can develop a specific template/canvas.
  • DMPonline: tool widely used in Europe and many universities or institutes provide a DMPonline instance to researchers.
  • DMPTool: widely used tool and many universities or institutes provide a DMPTool instance to researchers.
  • DMPRoadmap: DMP Roadmap is a Data Management Planning tool. Management and development of DMP Roadmap is jointly provided by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), http://www.dcc.ac.uk/, and the University of California Curation Center (UC3), http://www.cdlib.org/services/uc3/. The DMPTool and DMPonline sites are both now running from the joint DMPRoadmap codebase.
  • easy.DMP: tool provided by the pan-European network EUDAT.
  • Argos: the joint effort of OpenAIRE and EUDAT to deliver an open platform for Data Management Planning.
• Examples of useful resources for writing and implementing a DMP.
  • FAIR Implementation Profile and FIP Wizard are effective instruments for clearly defining and explaining the particular implementation choices required to effectively enact FAIR principles during and after the course of a research project.
  • Research Data Management Organiser: tool that supports the systematic planning, organisation and implementation of research data management throughout the course of a project.
  • Resources about data management plan can be found via the DMPlanner registry.
  • Webinars explaining what a data management plan is and when you might need one, such as the Research Management Plan webinar produced in collaboration with Dr. Rob Hooft, Technical Coordinator of the Dutch TechCentre for Life Sciences, could be useful instruments to learn more about the topic.

Related pages

More information

Tools and resources on this page

Skip tool table View national resources 22 Contributors