Library Research Support: Open Research: Writing a good Data Management Plan

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a short document which explains to your funder and to your collaborators how you intend to manage your research data during and after your grant funding period.  Writing a DMP should not be seen as an administrative burden but rather an opportunity to convince your funder that you have a strategy for managing research data responsibly.  What research data will you create?  How will you guarantee your research data is stored safely?  How will you protect personal data?  How will you store large volumes of research data?  Where might you publish the research data which supports your findings?  You will propose solutions to some of these questions in your DMP.

UKRI has written Guidance on best practice in the management of research data.  This is essential reading for all researchers even if your funder is not UKRI.  At the end of the UKRI guidance, there is a DMP template which describes what you need to include in your DMP.  Please read this valuable guidance.

After reading the guidance, you should write your DMP using the DMPonline tool.  The tool includes published DMPs but you will need to filter the list by funder because there are too many DMPs to scan.  You can also read a sample of DMPs written by other Durham researchers; these appear under 'Durham University plans' on your dashboard in DMPonline.

Please follow these steps to write your plan:

1. Browse to DMPonline
2. Create a DMPonline account using your Durham e-mail address
3. Login with your Durham institutional account credentials.  This should link your two accounts.
4. In your dashboard, notice that some DMPs have been shared by other Durham researchers
5. Choose CREATE PLANS and select a DMP template based on your funder or choose the Durham University standard DMP template
6. Choose WRITE THE PLAN and answer all questions as best as you can.  This is the most difficult part.  Notice the extensive guidance on the right-hand side of the user interface.  Each question relates to a specific aspect of data management.
7. Choose SHARE plan and enter the e-mail addresses of your collaborators.
8. If you'd like your DMP reviewed by the University's Research Data Manager, Nicholas Syrotiuk, please click REQUEST FEEDBACK.

A typical DMP has the following structure:

• Description of your research project
• Detailed description of the research data you will create or collect.  For example, see Table 1 below.
• Data documentation including README file, data processing steps, consent form, information sheet, descriptive metadata
• Sensitivity of the data
  • Non-personal data (least sensitive)
  • Anonymised data
  • Pseudonymised data
  • Personal data
  • Special categories of personal data
  • Secret data (most sensitive)
• Short-term storage of research data during the project.  See CIS Storage options tool.
• Long-term storage of research data after the project.  See choosing a suitable data repository.

European funding bodies will typically ask you to describe your research data and to answer questions about the F.A.I.R. data principles.

These column headings are for illustration purposes only.  You will need to think of meaningful column headings for your research project.

(**) You should ask your funder to contribute in whole or in part to SRS storage costs.  You will need to choose an appropriate CIS storage tier for your project: Gold tier or Silver tier.