Research Data Plans

1. Research and Sponsored Programs has this link: http://researchdata.wisc.edu/

2. Content presented below was from a Research Data Group Presentation on 10/16/12

Analysis of Research Data Plan requirements around the differing requirements and evolving nature of those plans.

Because the requirement for data management plans is a pretty new one, the requirements of the different granting programs is pretty diverse. It seems that each program/division/group has differing ideas of what exactly is meant by a data management plan.

A group of research librarians decided to analyze various data management plans at different granting programs to look for some consistency in requirements or some way to determine how to best satisify the data management plan requirement. The result was the following paper.

http://www.istl.org/12-summer/refereed1.html

De-Mystifying the Data Management Requirements of Research Funders

by Dianne Dietrich, Cornell University, Trisha Adamus, Syracuse University, Alison Miner, Syracuse University, and Gail Steinhart, Cornell University

Trisha Adamus is currently with the UW, and the presenter of this talk.

What it comes down to is this…

Be as detailed and consise as possible. Include

1) a description of the project

2) description of how data will be collected

3) standards that will be applied to formats/metadata

4) plan for short-term storage and data management

5) legal and ethical issues of this research

6) access policies and procedures for dispersal of this data (such as an open access journal)

7) provisions for long-term archival and preservation

8) a contact for data management responsiblilites

Trisha and her group would be happy to meet with people who want to explicitly parse these recommendations, but she believes that the individual granting agencies will become more explicit with their requirements in this respect as they collect various submissions and determine what is more attractive in terms of data management policies and submissions.

Basically they are most concerned with sharing, and most data librarians agree that the best way this could be done would be for the granting agencies to provide a platform for publishing grant data results. NIH already does this with the PubMed Central data site.

It seems that most of the other data management requirements are left to either the researcher themselves to pay for out of their grant or the college to define. Again, it seems to be an emerging area that will likely be better defined as time continues.