Data Management Planning

A data management plan (or paragraph) makes research data management concrete and practicable: what are you going to do and how?
It saves you time, work and money: by elaborating the management of research data at an early stage, you reduce the chances of having to face unpleasant surprises later in your research.
You may also need planning to have computer facilities like network storage or specific hardware at your disposal.

• What data are you going to collect? What type of data or what file formats?
• Where and how will you store your data? What backup methods and procedures do you use?
• How are you going to organise and describe your data?
• Who can access your data, will the archived data become available to others?
• If there is an embargo, how are you going to manage access?
• What data will be archived when the project is finished? Where and for how long?
• Who owns the data? Who is responsible for the management of your data?
• Is there a provision for the means necessary to implement this plan?

Your Research Institute or Faculty will probably have a policy regarding research data that your DMP should comply with, please check that.
Overview of Faculties and Institutes Research Data Management policies

Also funding agencies, such as NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research), ZonMw (Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development) and the Europen Research Council demand a research data management plan.
For a  research proposal with NWO/TNO you have to answer 4 questions in a Data Management Chapter.
For a research proposal with ZonMw there is a data management checklist.

Please note that for a granted NWO or ZonMW project your Data Management Plan has to be completed in consultation with a data management specialist.
Read more on our website about the the requierements for such a DMP.

Do you need help with your DMP? Just send us an email: researchdata rug.nl

UMCG researchers, please contact UMCG Research Data Services for support