This talk presents the recent development and promotion of the ‘7 Do’s of DMPs’ guidance at RCSI.
In recent years, we have seen an increasing emphasis on research data management due to a convergence of developments, including a growing dependence on technology for research, new legislative instruments addressing the storage and use of personal data, alongside the growing recognition of the potential of Open Research.
One aspect of this is the emergence of the Data Management Plan (DMP) as a standard practice in research. The researcher documents, by way of the DMP, their plans for generating, storing, using and sharing their research data. Many funding organisations provide their own DMP template, consisting of a series of prompting questions or headings. There are also several openly available DMP wizard tools to assist researchers in generating this document.
Nonetheless, the process of writing their first DMP can overwhelm many researchers. They may be used to describing their methodology, or research questions, but not necessarily the underpinning data. Terminology used in Open Research may also be unfamiliar to them, or they may be unsure of how much detail to provide in the DMP.
In 2022, we developed a talk called the ‘7 Do’s of DMPs’ with the intent of distilling seven key elements that are consistent across a range of DMP templates. The DMP is usually the first point of contact between the researcher and library staff, therefore the 7 Do’s of DMPs provides an accessible and ‘friendly’ introduction to research data management. A checklist accompanies the talk, and staff in the library and the research support office can use this to identify the areas to be addressed in a DMP.
