2. Data Management Plan

Modified

September 13, 2024

Course Overview

⏰ Time Estimation: X minutes
💬 Learning Objectives:

  1. Learn what is a DMP
  2. Learn about the different DMP templates
  3. How to write a DMP focused on NGS data

The process of data management involves implementing tailored best practices for your data but how do you ensure comprehensive coverage of the decisions and that data is well-managed throughout its life cycle. To achieve this, a Data Management Plan (DMP) is essential.

DMP are required for grant applications to ensure research data to be FAIR. A DMP serves as a comprehensive document detailing strategies for handling project data, code, and documentation across its life cycle. It includes plans for data collection, documentation, organization, and preservation.

Benefits of writing a DMP

A DMP serves as the initial step toward achieving FAIR principles in a project.

  • It helps identify gaps in current data management strategies early on, thereby saving time and effort in the long run.
  • It establishes standards for all collaborators to adhere to, ensuring consistency in data organization, naming conventions, metadata standards, and vocabularies.
  • Ensures the estimation of costs associated with data production, storage, and management.
  • It clarifies responsibilities regarding the data management process, specifying who is accountable for executing the DMP.
  • It enhances the likelihood of well-managed data, promoting reproducibility and reusability of research results (facilitating the results’ verification and reducing redundancy).

Moreover, writing a DMP is increasingly becoming a requirement by funders and other stakeholders:

  • Transparency and openness: publicly funded research data must be discoverable, accessible, and reusable by the public
  • Return on investment: well-planned data maximizes the research potential of the data leading to greater returns on public investments in research.

Best time to draft a DMP

A DMP is a living document and the initial version should be written in the early stages of a research project, however is never too late to develop one. Ideally, it is initially drafted during the project’s conceptualization, before seeking funding, and is subsequently updated as the project evolves. There are key stages:

  1. Project planning: to estimate resource requirements to include in the funding proposal (e.g. data production, data analysis and computational resources, storage, costs related to publishing of data).
  2. Project initiation: to include more detailed data management strategies (e.g. documentation, data quality measures, file and folder strategies, etc.)
  3. Project completion: to finalize details such as data archiving and publication links for future reuse.

Key components of a DMP

  1. Data Description: types and formats of data that will be collected or generated, including volume.
  2. Documentation: using metadata, including standards, formats, and methodologies.
  3. Data Storage and Backup: including data security and safeguarding metadata
  4. Legal and Ethical Considerations: ensuring compliance with legal requirements, especially regarding personal data and intellectual property.
  5. Accessibility and long-term Preservation: including deposition in public repositories and longevity.
  6. Responsibility and resources: estimating the required resources and identifying responsible individuals.

DMP templates

Various funding agencies and organizations may provide a Data Management Plan (DMP) template that researchers must follow to meet data management standards. It is advisable to utilize the template provided by your institution unless specific requirements are stipulated by a funding agency or collaborating institution.

  1. University of Copenhagen. Additional links: Download UCPH Word document; UCPH Guidance
  2. University Library of Southern Denmark
  3. Technical University of Denmark
  4. Aalborg University
  5. Aarhus university

Other templates and funding agencies:

  1. Data Stewardship wizard provided by SciLifeLab with specific questions to fill up.
  2. Swedish Research Council
  3. Science Europe
  4. DMP Tool
  5. Horizon Europe and ERC templates: projects funded in the Horizon Europe framework program must prepare and submit a data management plan as deliverable according to the details described in the respective grant agreement.

DMPonline

Researchers at Danish research institutions are advised to use DMPOnline, a tool for creating, sharing, and reviewing DMPs. It has been developed by the Digital Curation Centre and made available by Danish e-infrastructure Cooperation (DeiC) and jointly administered by the Royal Danish Library and DTU Library.

Follow this instructions to get an account. It offers several DMP templates with guidelines that are provided (generic and not specific to Life Sciences).

Exercise: write a DMP draft

Write a DMP draft from scratch, or use this template for inspiration.

The DMP template we offer has been prefilled using DMPonline and the Horizon Europe guidelines by one of us. It contains the necessary information and common practices (for example, the repositories, metadata, etc.). We used the Horizon Europe template as focuses more on digital data.

Wrap up

In this lesson, we covered Data Management Plans (DMPs) and introduced tools to aid in their creation, along with a template for your projects. DMPs serve as valuable aids in project planning, data preservation, and facilitating future use by yourself, collaborators, or the wider scientific community. Next, we’ll delve into organizing data efficiently and provide helpful tools for the task.

Sources