The Digital Curation Centre in Edinburgh have created useful guidance on funder requirements. Look up your funder in the table to get an overview of what is expected. If your funder is not listed in the table then you should ask your funder for any conditions they attach to their grants. Some funders may require you to submit a Data Management Plan. Others may require you to publish your (anonymised) supporting research data in a data repository.
AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Cancer Research UK, European Commission and Wellcome all require a detailed Data Management Plan (DMP) to be submitted with your grant application. The University provides some guidance on writing a good DMP. The University also runs an interactive workshop every academic term on Writing a good data management plan. Please see the guidance on training for more information about upcoming training events held at the University.
If your research project is going through the University's ethical review process, you will be asked about your DMP. In this case, a DMP is hightly recommended but not required. Your DMP should describe, in detail, all the research data you are planning to create or collect. Your DMP should describe your research methods, including how you will keep personal data safe. Where will you store personal data? When will you destroy research data containing personal or sensitive information? Your DMP should state how you will organise your research data (e.g., database or spreadsheet or other commercial software). If you can anonymise your supporting research data, in which data repository will you publish it? It's good research practice to write a detailed DMP for your project.
BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Cancer Research UK and Wellcome all require researchers to publish supporting research data in an open data repository unless the data must be restricted for security, confidentiality or commercial reasons. The University has written some guidance on choosing a data repository. A data repository will provide you with a DOI for your research data. This makes your research data easy to find and it means your research data will be preserved for a minimum of ten years. UKRI has written some guidance on publishing research data.
For further information, please read the relevant funder policy:
Current UKRI Open Access Policy states that "UKRI requires in-scope research articles to include a Data Access Statement, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible".
Here are a few examples of a Data Access Statement:
Please consult our guidance on choosing a suitable data repository if necessary.
"Data available on request" is a completely unsatisfactory Data Access Statement for all sorts of reasons. It is far too easy for a data request to remain unfulfilled. Making research data or metadata easily findable by DOI increases the transparency, reproducibility and impact of research.