Sam Held discusses Data Management Plans in his 14 February 2014 AEA blog posting on Federal (US) Data Sharing Policies
“A recent trend in the STEM fields is the call to share or access research data, especially data collected with federal funding. The result is requirements from the federal agencies for data management plans in grants, but the different agencies have different requirements. NSF requires a plan for every grant, but NIH only requires plans for grants over $500,000.
The common theme in all policies is “data should be widely and freely available as possible while safeguarding the privacy of participants, and protecting confidential and proprietary data” (NIH’s Statement on Sharing Data 2/26/2003). The call for a data sharing plan forces the PIs, evaluators, and those involved with the proposals to consider what data will be collected, how will it be stored and preserved, and what will be the procedures for sharing or distributing the data within privacy or legal requirements (i.e., HIPAA or IRB requirements). To me – the most important feature here is data formatting. What format will the data be in now and still be accessible or usable in the future or to those who cannot afford expensive software?”
He then points to DMPTool – a University of California online system for developing Data Management Plans. This site includes more than 20 different templates for the plans, provided by different funding bodies.
