Creating a Data Management Plan is an opportunity for the researcher to think through and plan for different stages in the data lifecycle. The Data Management Plan outlines needs and goals for collecting, organizing, documenting, preserving, and distributing the data associated with a particular research project.
Some questions that should be addressed by a data management plan include:
What research data will be created?
What policies (funding, institutional, and legal) apply to the data?
What data management practices (backups, storage, access control, archiving) will be used?
What facilities and equipment will be required (hard-disk space, backup server, and repository)?
Who will own and have access to the data? Who will be responsible for each aspect of the plan?
How will data reuse be enabled and long-term preservation ensured after the original research is completed?
The DMPTool (http://dmptool.org) is an easy to use online tool to create ready-to-use data management plans for grant applications. Swarthmore College is a member, so you can sign in with your Swarthmore user name and password. Take a look at the Quick Start Guide to begin creating a plan.
It has information about the different funder requirements (https://dmptool.org/general_guidance​) and sample data management plans (https://dmptool.org/public_plans).
