Data Management: What is a Data Management Plan?

Information contained in a data management plan describes your plan for addressing many aspects of working with data. A DMP need not be lengthy, but it will typically address many relevant aspects of your data, including but not limited to:

• Types of data: What is the source of your data? In what formats are your data? Will your data be fixed or will it change over time? How much data will your project produce?
• Contextual details (metadata): How will you document and describe your data?
• Storage, backup and security: How and where will you store and secure your data?
• Provisions for protection/privacy: What privacy and confidentiality issues must you address?
• Policies for re-use: How may other researchers use your data?
• Access and sharing: How will you provide access to your data by other researchers? How will others discover your data?
• Archiving and providing access: What are your plans for preserving the data and providing long-term access?

​Source: Harvard University Library

Source: TU Delft

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a formal document that specifies how research data will be handled both during and after a research project. It identifies key actions to ensure that research data are safe, sustainable and – where possible – accessible and reusable. A DMP should be considered a ‘living’ document - it is ideally created before or at the start of a research project, but updated when necessary as the project progresses. Planning for data management is therefore not a one-off event, but a process. To help you, there are DMP templates made available. The DMP template for H2020 projects provided by the EC includes:

• A summary of your data
• How to make your data FAIR
• Information about costs and resources
• Information about data security
• Ethical aspects

DMPonline is an online tool that provides a number of templates representing the requirements of different funders and institutions, such as Horizon 2020. It also provides further guidance to understand and answer template-specific questions. Plans created with DMPonline can be easily shared with collaborators and exported in various formats.

Check out DMPonline installations here.

Source: OpenAIRE

Planning for a project involves making decisions about data resources and potential products. The Data Management Plan (DMP) describes data that will be acquired or produced during research; how the data will be managed, described, and stored, what standards you will use, and how data will be handled and protected during and after the completion of the project.

Source: USGS Data Management Plans

Source: OpenAIRE