Research Data Management

The National Science Foundation (NSF) started requiring a Data Management Plan in January 2011. The data management plan (DMP) is a document that is no longer than 2 pages, and must be included in the Special Information and Supplementary Documentation section of grant proposals. Fastlane will not allow the submission of proposals that do not include a DMP. 

The NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) states that "Investigators are expected to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants. Grantees are expected to encourage and facilitate such sharing." 

It is strongly suggested that you use the specific template for your NSF program if one is available.  These templates have been engineered to fulfill the requirements of the particular Directorate or Division.

Many NSF units have additional or different data management requirements.  First, read the solicitation to see if there are any specific requirements. Second, look at the Requirements by Directorate, Office, Division, Program or other NSF Unit section to see if their are specific guidelines for your discipline.  Third, if there are no additional requirements, follow the general NSF Data Management Plan Requirements section, which is the default for all NSF proposals.

Public Access to results of NSF-Funded Research 

NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR)

Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Public Access 

nsf-gen template  This is a generic template which can be used for any NSF DMP.   If the program you are interested in does not have a template link, then use the generic template. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) has two divisions that provide funding for academic research - The Office of Science (OS) and the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE). They both adhere to the Department's policies on digital data management.

The Department of Energy affirms that the following principles for the management of digital research data support its mission.

• Effective data management has the potential to increase the pace of scientific discovery and promote more efficient and effective use of government funding and resources. Data management planning should be an integral part of research planning.
• Sharing and preserving data are central to protecting the integrity of science by facilitating validation of results and to advancing science by broadening the value of research data to disciplines other than the originating one and to society at large. To the greatest extent, with the fewest constraints possible, and consistent with the requirements and other principles stated in this document, data sharing should make digital research data available to and useful for the scientific community, industry, and the public.
• Not all data need to be shared or preserved. The costs and benefits of doing so should be considered in data management planning.  

DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management 

DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management FAQs

Suggested Elements for a Data Management Plan 

• Data Types and Sources. A brief, high-level description of the data to be generated or used through the course of the proposed research and which of these are considered Digital Research Data necessary to Validate the research findings.

• Content and Format. A statement of plans for data and metadata content and format including, where applicable, a description of documentation plans, annotation of relevant software, and the rationale for the selection of appropriate standards. (Existing, accepted community standards should be used where possible. Where community standards are missing or inadequate, the DMP could propose alternate strategies that facilitate sharing, and should advise the sponsoring program of any need to develop or generalize standards.)

• Data Sharing and Data Preservation. A description of the plans for data sharing and preservation. This should include, when appropriate:

• The anticipated means for sharing and the rationale for any restrictions on who may access the data and under what conditions;

• A timeline for sharing and preservation that addresses both the minimum length of time the data will be available and any anticipated delay to data access after research findings are published;

• Any special requirements for data sharing, for example, proprietary software needed to access or interpret data, applicable policies, provisions, and licenses for re-use and re-distribution, and for the production of derivatives, including guidance for how data and data products should be cited;

• Any resources and capabilities (equipment, connections, systems, software, expertise, etc.) requested in the research proposal that are needed to meet the stated goals for sharing and preservation (This could reference the relevant section of the associated research proposal and budget request);

• Cost-benefit considerations to support whether/where the data will be preserved after direct project funding ends and any plans for the transfer of responsibilities for sharing and preservation;

• Whether, when, or under what conditions the management responsibility for the research data will be transferred to a third party (e.g. institutional or community repository);

• Any other future decision points regarding the management of the research data, including plans to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of data sharing and preservation.

• Protection. A statement of plans, where appropriate and necessary, to protect confidentiality, personal privacy, Personally Identifiable Information, and U.S. national, homeland, and economic security; recognize proprietary interests, business confidential information, and intellectual property rights; and avoid significant negative impact on innovation, and U.S. competitiveness.

• Rationale. A discussion of the rationale or justification for the proposed data management plan including, for example, the potential impact of the data within the immediate field and in other fields, and any broader societal impact.

If you intend to use any of the Office of Science User Facilities, you will need to follow the data management requirements of the facilities in addition to the requirements of the programs and DOE. ASCR, BES, BER, FES, HEP and NP all have facilities available. The User Facilities page provides links to all of these resources. 

The NEH offers several grant programs. Funding opportunities are announced in blog posts and the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for each division. The ones that offer grant opportunities for faculty, staff, and organizations that might be pertinent to UVa are: Office of Digital Humanities, Division of Education Programs, Division of Preservation & Access, Division of Public Programs, and Division of Research Programs. ​​

Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by the NEH

Open Government Plan Plan for promoting transparency, participation, and collaboration in all aspects of its work.

Open Government and Open Data 

Data.gov NEH Datasets

All proposals require a Data Management Plan (or a Work Plan) and some require a Sustainability Plan. The NOFOs will state what is required for each program. Guidelines for writing your DMP are in the General Terms and Conditions for Awards to Organizations (for grants and cooperative agreements issued December 26, 2014 or later) Section 35, Dissemination of Project Results.

Blog: Planning 3: Managing and Sustaining the Project Assets - Data Management Plans (11/2019) 

FAQs - Funding for NEH Applicants and Grantees Impacted by the Coronavirus  

• Public Access Plan (2/2015) 

• DoD Instruction 3200.12 "DoD Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), Change 3" (12/17/2018). A Data Management Plan (DMP) describing the scientific data expected to be created or gathered in the course of a research project must be submitted to DTIC at the start of each research effort. It is important that DoD researchers document plans for preserving data at the outset, keeping in mind the potential utility of the data for future research or to support transition to operational or other environments. Otherwise, the data is lost as researchers move on to other efforts. The essential descriptive elements of the DMP are listed in section 3 of DoDI 3200.12, although the format of the plan may be adjusted to conform to standards established by the relevant scientific discipline or one that meets the requirements of the responsible Component. 

• DTIC summary of the Public Access Requirements Incorporated into the DoD STIP

• DTIC Policy Memoranda Provides summaries and links for STIP Policy DoD Directives, Instructions, and Manuals including 5105.73; 3200.12; 3200.14 Vol. 1; 3200.14 Vol. 2; 5230.24; 5230.25; 32 CFR 2002; 32 CFR 250; and 5230.27. Provides access to policies, manuals, and other documentation for Submissions of STI to DTIC; Unified Research and Engineering Database (URED); Independent Research and Development (IR&D); Technology Transfer; Security Classification Codes; Congressional Directives; SI Policy for All Executives Agencies; and Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research.

• DoD General Application Instructions 

• PubDefense: Public Access Search Interface 

• No. 5230.09 Clearance of DoD Information for Public Release (January 2019)

• DoD Discovery of Metadata Standard (DDMS) slides 7-8

NIH’s mission is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability. The NIH and related agencies are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The NIH Data Sharing Policy encourages NIH-funded researchers to share their final research data for use by other researchers in a timely way (i.e., no later than the acceptance for publication of the main findings from the final data set). The Policy expects applicants requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs in funding from NIH for research for any one year to include a data sharing plan or state why data sharing is not possible. There are several different data sharing policies in effect for the NIH, IC division, and at the program level.  The Data Sharing Policies Chart includes information and links to all of the relevant policies. All NIH units follow the NIH policies.  Many have additional requirements and guidelines.

NIH has maintained a list of NIH-supported data repositories for several years. They do not endorse or require sharing in any specific repository and encourage researchers to select the repository that is most appropriate for their data type and discipline (though such specification does exist for particular initiatives). To help researchers locate an appropriate resource for sharing their data, as well as to promote awareness of resources where datasets can be located for reuse, they maintain lists of several types of data sharing resources: 

• Open NIH-supported domain-specific repositories that house data of a specific type or related to a specific discipline;
• Other NIH-supported domain-specific resources, including repositories and knowledgebases, that have limitations on submitting and/or accessing data; and
• Generalist repositories that house data regardless of type, format, content, or subject matter.

***New Policy for Data Management and Sharing (effective January 25, 2023) 

Generic template: nih-gen template 

Data Sharing Workbook

Information about their overall policy, which applies to all divisions within the NIH, can be found in the NIH Grant Policy Statement (April 2021) (PDF). Important sections for data sharing requirements:

• 8.2 Availability of Research Results: Publications, Intellectual Property Rights, and Sharing Research Results.
• 8.2.3 Sharing Research Resources
• 8.2.3.1 Data Sharing Policy
• 8.2.3.2 Sharing Model Organisms

Grants and Funding Policy & Compliance 

NIH Single IRB Policy for Multi-site Research

Supplemental guidance documents including the NIH Data Sharing Policy and Implementation Guidance and the FAQs identify what the plans should cover.  They include:

• whether and how data will be made available to others, including provisions for protection of privacy, confidentiality, security, intellectual property, or other rights as appropriate
• data to be shared (e.g., genomic, clinical, or images), the expected timeline for when the data will be available, data formats, the format of the final data set, any query and/or analytic tools that will be provided, and the mode of data sharing (e.g., through a data archive or enclave or under the researcher’s own auspices by mailing a disk or posting data on an institutional or personal website)
• procedures to request the data, and any data sharing agreements including the criteria for accessing data and any limitations placed on the use of data. 

NIH Common Data Elements (CDE) Repository

More detailed information can be found in the Key Elements to Consider in Preparing a Data Sharing Plan Under NIH Extramural Support document.  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same. The CDC and related agencies are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). They use grants and cooperative agreements to fund research and non-research public health programs. They require awardees for projects that involve the collection or generation of data with federal funds to develop, submit and comply with a Data Management Plan (DMP) for each collection or generation of public health data undertaken as part of the award and, to the extent appropriate, provide access to and archiving and/or long term preservation of collected or generated data. 

The CDC requires a DMP for every data collection or data generation of public health data funded by an award.  The DMP may be submitted with the proposal that is in response to a FOA or after the funding has been awarded. Awardees should submit a DMP during the project planning phase, but no later than prior to the initiation of generating or collecting public health data.   A DMP should include the following information:

• A description of the data to be collected or generated in the proposed project;
• Standards to be used for the collected or generated data;
• Mechanisms for or limitations to providing access to and sharing of the data (include a description of provisions for the protection of privacy, confidentiality, security, intellectual property, or other rights). This section should address access to identifiable and de-identified data (see below for additional information about access);
• Statement of the use of data standards that ensure all released data have appropriate documentation that describes the method of collection, what the data represent, and potential limitations for use; and
• Plans for archiving and long-term preservation of the data, or explaining why long-term preservation and access are not justified. This section should address archiving and preservation of identifiable and de-identified data (see below for additional information regarding archiving). 

Remember that the DMP is a living document that can, and should, be updated throughout the life cycle of the data. The DMP may be evaluated during the application, study proposal, project review process, or at any time in the project period. 

Researchers must provide access to their public health data.  Some FOAs require that the data be submitted directly to the CDC Wonder database. Awardees whose terms of award do not include submitting data to CDC are expected to plan and prepare for access to and archiving and/or long-term preservation of collected and/or generated data within the funding period. The final version of a collected and/or generated data set intended for release or sharing should be made available within thirty months after the end of data collection and/or generation, except surveillance data which should be made accessible within a year of the end of the collection cycle.  Additionally, they should ensure the quality of the data they make available, and provide it in a non-proprietary format. 

CDC Library

For public use de-identified datasets, an accompanying data dictionary and other documentation relevant to the use of the data set should be deposited in a sustainable repository to provide access to the data.  Data that cannot be de-identified can be provided by request under a data-use agreement.  Awardees are required to inform the appropriate CDC point-of-contact for their award about the location by updating their DMP.  

For data underlying scientific publication, the data should be made available coincident with the publication of the paper, unless the data set is already available via a release or sharing mechanism.  At a minimum, release of the data set should consist of a machine-readable version of the data tables shown in the paper. 

CDC plan for increasing access to scientific publications and digital scientific data generated with CDC funding 

Public access to CDC funded publications 

Surveillance Resource Center  

Legal, Ethical, Policy - Data Sharing

Grants  

Award Terms & Conditions, Federal Regulations and Policies 

• CDC General Terms and Conditions for Non-research Awards

• CDC General Terms and Conditions for Research Awards

Additional requirement - 25: Data Management and Access "CDC requires recipients for projects that involve the collection or generation of data with federal funds to develop, submit and comply with a Data Management Plan (DMP) for each collection or generation of public health data undertaken as part of the award and, to the extent appropriate, provide access to, and archiving/long-term preservation of, collected or generated data."

UVa Templates: 

• Data Management Plan Template for CDC Datasets

• Data Sharing Agreement Template for CDC Surveillance and Research Datasets

• Data Access Request Template for CDC Surveillance and Research Datasets 

• Public Use Dataset Release Template for CDC Surveillance and Research Datasets 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data sharing requirements for extramural research were drafted in February 2016.  The purpose...is to ensure that environmental data funded extramurally by NOAA are made publicly accessible in a timely fashion (typically within two years of collection), in a format that is machine-readable and based on open standards, and which includes the metadata necessary to find and properly use the data. Additionally, the final manuscripts of peer-reviewed research papers must be deposited with the NOAA Central Library. The Directive requires that funding opportunity announcements include Data Management Guidance, and relevant proposals include a Data Management Plan (Appendix A).  This is effective for all FFO Announcements, Grant Solicitations and Special Award Conditions issued on or after June 1, 2016. 

The data management plan (DMP) is a document that is no more than 2 pages long, describing how these requirements will be satisfied. The contents of the Data Management Plan (or absence thereof), and past performance regarding such plans, will be considered as part of proposal review. A typical plan should include descriptions of the types of environmental data and information expected to be created during the course of the project; the tentative date by which data will be shared; the standards to be used for data/metadata format and content; methods for providing data access; approximate total volume of data to be collected; and prior experience in making such data accessible. The costs of data preparation, accessibility, or archiving may be included in the proposal budget unless otherwise stated in the Guidance. 

NOAA defines data management as "a combination of two major activities conducted in coordination, data management services and data stewardship, which together constitute a comprehensive end-to-end process including movement of data and information from the observing system sensors to the data user. This process includes the acquisition, quality control, metadata cataloging, validation, reprocessing, storage, retrieval, dissemination, and archival of data."  

Environmental (research) data and information collected or created under NOAA grants or cooperative agreements must be made discoverable by and accessible to the general public, unless a waiver has been granted. They must be listed in NOAA's public catalog. Data should be machine-readable, preferably a widely-used or open-standard format, and should also be accompanied by machine-readable documentation (metadata), preferably based on widely used or international standards. Information can be found in the NOAA Data Access Procedural Directive, along with a copy of the waiver request form. 

Persistent identifiers (DOI) must be assigned to data so that users can reference the identifiers when data are used in research, scholarly communications, assessments, models or derived products.  Data archived at the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), [which includes the organizations formerly known as the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC), and the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC)], will have a DOI assigned to them after deposit. They cannot provide DOI's for data deposited in other repositories, and encourage you to submit your data to the NCEI. 

NOAA requires that data must have a comprehensive metadata record which complies with the NOAA Data Documentation Procedural Directive. This is a requirement for all data generated by NOAA funding, not just ones deposited in NCEI. The primary metadata requirement ISO 19115 standard. Information on it and the collection of tools is in the Metadata resource.  Documentation should be provided for all data collections, products derived from them, services that provide NOAA data and products, and all data collections funded by NOAA.  This includes data collections currently in progress and their related products, and all active and planned data collection programs.

Environmental Data Management Framework (EDM) 

Science Integrity Commons

The National Marine Fisheries Service is responsible for the stewardship of the nation's ocean resources and their habitat. 

The Office of Marine and Aviation Operations (OMAO) manages and operates NOAA's fleet of 15 research and survey ships and 10 aircraft.

The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), we provide secure and timely access to global environmental data and information from satellites and other sources to promote and protect the Nation's security, environment, economy, and quality of life.

National Ocean Service (NOS) provides data, tools, and services that support coastal economies and their contribution to the national economy.

National Weather Service (NWS) provide weather, water, and climate data, forecasts and warnings for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy. 

The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) - or "NOAA Research" - provides the research foundation for understanding the complex systems that support our planet.   

Labs and Programs  

The Climate Explorer

UVa NOAA Data Management Plan template