Preparing a data management plan
Data management plans ensure that all aspects of data management are fully perceived at the start of a project.
A data management plan is a document which describes:
- What research data will be created.
- What policies (funding, institutional, and legal) apply to the data.
- What data management practices (backups, storage, access control, archiving) will be used.
- What facilities and equipment will be required (hard-disk space, backup server, repository).
- Who will own and have access to the data.
- Who will be responsible for each aspect of the plan.
How its reuse will be enabled and long-term preservation ensured after the original research is completed.
The data management plan must be continuously maintained and kept up-to-date throughout the course of research.
Components of a data management plan
A detailed data management plan should give answers to the following questions:
- What kind of data will be collected?
- How will the data be collected?
- Who holds the copyright and intellectual property rights of the data?
- What kind of possession issues are involved?
- Who will decide on access to the data?
- How will the research participants be informed?
- Which software will be used in storing and processing the data?
- How will the (technical) quality of the data be assured?
- Which data formats and storage media will be used?
- What kind of rights will be granted to different user groups for reading and managing data files?
- What kind of data and file backup procedures will be used?
- How will data processing be documented?
- How will the metadata on the data collection and dataset content be stored?
- How will confidentiality be ensured?
- How will data protection be carried out?
- What will happen to the data after the original research is completed?
© University of Edinburgh, 2011. Used with permission.
