Data Management and Sharing

Many funding agencies now require you to include a data management plan as part of a grant proposal submission. Generally speaking, data management plans detail how you will make your data publicly available for others to use.

Here is a sample of current policies for data management and sharing from a variety of U.S. grant funding agencies:

• NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy
• NSF Public Access Requirements, including directorate and division specific guidance
• DoD: Public Access Requirements Incorporated into the DoD STIP
• NIJ (research funding agency of DOJ) Data Archiving
• NEH: Data Management Plans for NEH Office of Digital Humanities Proposals and Awards
• NASA's Public Access Plan

Visit MIT's Research Funder Requirements for succinct summaries on many of these policies.

Many U.S. agencies are in the process of updating their data sharing policies in response to the "Nelson Memo". In 2022 the Office of Scientific and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum known as the "Nelson Memo"  which directs all U.S. funding agencies to update their public access policies such that any research publications and associated data achieved through federal grant money be made publicly available without embargo. 

Timeline-

• August 25, 2022 Nelson Memo published
• December 31, 2024- Agencies complete and publish full public access policies
• December 31, 2025- Public access polices go into effect no later than this date

Visit Public Access Plans & Guidance on science.gov to see how each U.S. Federal Funding agency is responding to this memorandum.

• NIH, National Institutes of Health: Human Clinical Trial data, National Institute for Child Health and Human Development
  • https://sharing.nih.gov/sites/default/files/flmngr/Example_DMS_Plan_Clinical-Trial-NIH_Format_Page.pdf 
• DoD, Department of Defense: Graph-Based Stochastic Learning to Build Physics-Informed AI for Discovering Defect Mechanisms in Powder-based Fabrication
  • https://doi.org/10.48321/D1HH0S
• NSF, National Science Foundation: Analyzing Diversity Efforts in Public Radio Organizations
  • https://zenodo.org/records/4710327#.YJLv931KhTY
• NEH, National Endowment for the Humanities: A Community Workbench for Studying Enlightenment Media
  • https://dmptool.org/public_plans?search=A+Community+Workbench+for+Studying+Enlightenment+Media&sort_by=featured
• NASA Heliophysics Science Division: Connecting the Accretion History of the Trojan Family to Their Solar Environment through Observations of Diffuse Interplanetary Dust in Jovian Orbits
  • https://doi.org/10.48321/D1DC3C2A4C
• Department of Justice/National Institute of Justice: Court Workforce Racial Diversity and Racial Justice in Criminal Case Outcomes in the United States
  • https://dmptool.org/public_plans?search=Court+Workforce+Racial+Diversity&sort_by=featured
• DoE, Department of Energy: Determining Fundamental Properties of Tritiated Hydrogen to Advance Fusion Energy Technology
  • https://doi.org/10.48321/D14DAE1B84
• For more, see "DMP Competition Winners: DMPs so good they go to 11"
  • https://blog.dmptool.org/2021/05/19/dmp-competition-winners-dmps-so-good-they-go-to-11/

The DMP Tool is a free, open source, web-based application to help researchers create a data management plan that meets grant funder requirements. It provides sidebar guidance as well as sample answers and fill-in-the-blank prompts.