A Data Management Plan outlines how data will be collected, organized, stored, secured, shared, and preserved in a research project. It covers data collection methods, organization, storage, sharing, preservation, ethics, and researcher responsibilities. Data Management Plans promote transparency and maximize research impact by ensuring your data can be used effectively, by you, your collaborators, and future generations of researchers. They can be a powerful tool for thinking in advance about collaborative research workflows and can help forecast financial costs associated with data so they can be written into budgets and funded.
Data Management Plans are increasingly required by federal grant funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Different funders have different policies, so it is important to look at the requirements of the granting agency to learn about their Data Policies and Compliance.
Data management plans are brief (2-3 page) documents that outline in advance how you will manage your data throughout the life of your project. They often include:
The DMPTool from the California Digital Library is an online tool for creating data management plans. It has templates and resources to guide you through the process of creating a data management plan that is in compliance with funder requirements.
Email dataservices@ucdavis.edu to schedule a consultation related to the organization, storage, preservation, and sharing of data.