Presentation delivered remotely at the AgreenSkills seminar in Paris, France, 15th February 2017

1. Developing a Data Management Plan
Martin Donnelly
Digital Curation Centre
University of Edinburgh
AgreenSkills Annual Seminar
Paris, 15 February 2017

2. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

3. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

4. The Digital Curation Centre (DCC)
• The UK’s national centre of expertise in digital
preservation and data management, est. 2004
• Principal audience is the UK higher education sector, but
we increasingly work further afield (continental Europe,
North America, South Africa, Asia…)
• Provide guidance, training, tools (e.g. DMPonline) and
other services on all aspects of research data
management and Open Science
• Now offering tailored consultancy/training
• Organise national and international events and webinars
(International Digital Curation Conference, Research
Data Management Forum)

5. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

6. Background
• Checklist for a Data Management Plan (v1, 2009)
• A generic list of issues that a DMP could or should cover, derived from
UK funder requirements
• DMPonline (2010-present)
• A wizard-style, Web-based tool to help researchers and other related
professionals to produce and maintain DMPs according to funder or
institutional policies
• Book Chapter (2011)
• “Data Management Plans and Planning” in Pryor G (ed.) Managing
Research Data (New York, Facet)
• DMPTool (2011-present)
• Helped bring the US DMPTool consortium together, and provided
advice as they were starting up
• EC Reviews (2016-17)
• In summer 2016, I was one of two expert reviewers for first iteration
Horizon 2020 data management plans, and I’m doing it again for the
next batch in February/March 2017

7. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

8. Recap: what is RDM?
“the active management
and appraisal of data over
the lifecycle of scholarly
and scientific interest”
What sorts of activities?
- Planning and describing data-
related work before it takes
place
- Documenting your data so that
others can find and understand it
- Storing it safely during the
project
- Depositing it in a trusted archive
at the end of the project
- Linking publications to the
datasets that underpin them

9. The benefits of Openness
• SPEED: The research process becomes faster
• EFFICIENCY: Data collection can be funded once, and
used many times for a variety of purposes
• ACCESSIBILITY: Interested third parties can (where
appropriate) access and build upon publicly-funded
research resources with minimal barriers to access
• IMPACT and LONGEVITY: Open publications and data
receive more citations, over longer periods
• TRANSPARENCY and QUALITY: The evidence that
underpins research can be made open for anyone to
scrutinise, and attempt to replicate findings. This leads
to a more robust scholarly record

10. Data Management Plans and Planning
• Data management planning (DMP) underpins and
pulls together different strands of RDM activities,
often across multiple project partners
• DMP is the process of planning, describing and communicating
activities carried out during the research lifecycle in order to…
• Keep sensitive data safe
• Maximise data’s reuse potential
• Support longer-term preservation
• A data management plan is usually a short document detailing specifics
of the data that will be created during a research project, together
with information on how it can be accessed and utilised
• Research funders often ask for DMPs to be submitted alongside grant
applications and/or developed over the course of the research project.
(HEIs are increasingly asking their researchers to do this too…)

11. Benefits of data management planning
• It is intuitive that planned activities stand a better
chance of meeting their goals than unplanned ones. The
process of planning is also a process of communication,
increasingly important in interdisciplinary/multi-partner
research. Collaboration will be more harmonious if
project partners (in industry, other universities, other
countries…) are on the same page
• In terms of data security, if there are good reasons not to
publish/share data, in whole or in part, you will be on
more solid ground if you flag these up early in the process
• DMP also provides an ideal opportunity to engender good
practice with regard to (e.g.) file formats, metadata
standards, storage and risk management practices,
leading to greater longevity of data, and improved quality
standards…

12. Limits of data management planning
What can a plan not do? It can’t do the
work for you.
The map is not the territory (Korzybski)
or
Chalk’s no shears (Scottish saying)
It is important to remember that the
human challenges in data management
are often more difficult to meet than
the technological ones.
So communication is vital, especially in
international, multi-partner research!

13. What does a data management plan look like?
• It is usually a couple of pages outlining:
ü how data will be captured/created
ü how it will be documented
ü who will be able to access it
ü where it will be stored
ü how it will be backed up, and
ü whether (and how) it will be shared and preserved long-term
ü etc
• DMPs are often submitted as part of funding applications – and requirements
vary from funder to funder – but they are useful whenever researchers are
creating (or reusing) data, especially where the research involves multiple
partners, countries, etc…

14. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

15. Roles and responsibilities
Like RDM in general, data management planning is a hybrid
activity, involving multiple stakeholder groups…
• The principal investigator (usually ultimately responsible for data)
• Research assistants (may be more involved in day-to-day data
management)
• The institution’s funding office (may have a compliance role)
• Library/IT/Legal (The library may issue PIDs, or liaise with an external
service who do this, e.g. DataCite.)
• Partners based in other institutions
• Commercial partners
• Etc
Other stakeholders in the modern research process include
governments, public services, and the general public (who fund
lots of research via their taxes)

16. Caveat!
• It’s not necessary – or even desirable – for every
researcher (or research administrator, or librarian, or IT
person…) to become an expert in every aspect of data
management
• Useful expertise may already exist within the research
office, library, IT, departmental support staff, legal
services etc, as well as academic colleagues well versed
in data management
• The trick is to harness this and to make it appear
seamless. Communication and coordination (or at least
the appearance of…) is increasingly important

17. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

18. European policy
• Currently in the midst of an extended pilot for Horizon 2020. Other
projects can participate voluntarily, and opting in has been more
popular than opting out
• Applies as minimum to research data underlying publications, plus any
other data as decided by project
• Participants must:
• Write a DMP as a project deliverable
• Deposit data in a repository
• Make it possible for others to access, mine, exploit and reuse the data
• Share information on the tools needed
…unless there are compelling reasons not to do so.
And these reasons should be recorded… in the DMP.
• Approach: “As open as possible, as closed as necessary”

19. Horizon 2020 – extended pilot (i)
As part of making research data findable,
accessible, interoperable and re-usable (FAIR), a
DMP should include information on:
• the handling of research data during and after the end
of the project
• what data will be collected, processed and/or
generated
• which methodology and standards will be applied
• whether data will be shared/made open access and
• how data will be curated and preserved (including after
the end of the project)
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-data-mgt_en.pdf

20. Horizon 2020 – extended pilot (ii)
• Once a project has had its funding approved and has started, you must
submit a first version of your DMP (as a deliverable) within the first 6
months of the project
• The Commission provides a DMP template, the use of which is
recommended but voluntary
• The DMP needs to be updated over the course of the project whenever
significant changes arise, such as (but not limited to):
• new data
• changes in consortium policies (e.g. new innovation potential, decision to file
• for a patent)
• changes in consortium composition and external factors (e.g. new consortium
• members joining or old members leaving).
• The DMP should be updated as a minimum in time with the periodic
evaluation/assessment of the project. If there are no other periodic
reviews foreseen within the grant agreement, then such an update
needs to be made in time for the final review at the latest.
Furthermore, the consortium can define a timetable for review in the
DMP itself
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-data-mgt_en.pdf

21. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

22. DCC resources
• Guidance, e.g. “How-To Develop a Data
Management and Sharing Plan”
• DCC Checklist for a Data Management
Plan:
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-
management-plans/checklist
• DMPonline tool:
https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk/
• Links to all DCC DMP resources via
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-
management-plans

23. • Helps researchers write DMPs
• Provides funder questions and guidance
• Includes a template DMP for Horizon 2020
• Provides help from universities
• Examples and suggested answers
• Free to use
• Mature (v1 launched April 2010)
• Code is Open Source (on GitHub)
https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk
DMPonline: overview

24. Registration
Sign up with your
email address,
organisation and
password
Select ‘other
organisation’ if
yours is not listed

25. Creating a plan
Select funder (if any)
Select organisation for
additional questions
and guidance
Select other sources
of guidance

26. Plan details: summary
Summary of the sections and
questions in your DMP

27. Answering questions
Notes who has answered
the question and when
Progress bar updates how
many questions remain

28. Sharing plans
Allow colleagues to
read-only, read-write,
or become co-owners

29. Co-writing DMPs
Sections are locked for editing
when they’re being worked on
by colleagues

30. Exporting DMPs
Can export as plain text, docx, PDF, html...

31. Institutions can customise the tool by…
• Adding templates
• Adding custom guidance
• Providing example or suggested answers
• Monitoring usage within their organisation
• Offering non-English language versions
www.dcc.ac.uk/news/customising-dmponline-admin-
interface-launches

32. More information
Customising DMPonline
www.dcc.ac.uk/news/customising-
dmponline-admin-interface-launches
http://www.screenr.com/PJHN
Get the code, amend it, run a local instance, flag issues, request features...
https://github.com/DigitalCurationCentre/DMPonline_v4

33. And finally, some sample plans
• There are lots of data management plans available on
the Web. The DCC provides links to a number of
sample DMPs via
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-management-
plans/guidance-examples
• The US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
recently released over 100 of its DMPs. These are
available via:
http://www.neh.gov/divisions/odh/grant-news/data-
management-plans-successful-grant-applications-2011-
2014-now-available

34. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

35. Nota bene!
• DMP is above all a communication activity, between
the data collectors and their contemporaries (project
partners and funders) and with future data re-users…
• Remember that there is no magic bullet, and no one-
size-fits-all solution!
• Much of the benefit of data management planning lies
in the process of planning, above and beyond the plans
produced at the end of the process
• A DMP should be a living document. Research seldom
goes entirely according to plan, and plans should be
updated to reflect the reality of the research, not the
other way around!

36. Contents
1. About the DCC
2. My involvement with DMPs
3. DMP: what and why?
4. Who’s involved in the DMP process?
5. DMP specifics in H2020
6. Useful resources
7. A few things to note/remember
8. Contacts and opportunity for questions

37. Thank you: any questions?
• For more information about the DCC:
• Website: www.dcc.ac.uk
• Director: Kevin Ashley
(kevin.ashley@ed.ac.uk)
• General enquiries: Alex Delipalta
(alexandra.delipalta@ed.ac.uk)
• Twitter: @digitalcuration
• My contact details:
• Email: martin.donnelly@ed.ac.uk
• Twitter: @mkdDCC
• Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/martindonn
elly
This work is licensed
under the Creative
Commons Attribution 2.5
UK: Scotland License.