A data management plan usually describes the data, code, and other research products you will produce and how you will format, document, store, and preserve them. A plan also describes what data you will share with other researchers and how you will distribute those materials.
Funding agencies and journals increasingly expect that you will, as much as possible, share data, code, and other products with other researchers. The agencies and journals believe that data sharing supports reproducibility and replication, which are essential to the integrity and progress of science and scholarly inquiry. For this reason, your plan should describe data management and sharing during your research and, importantly, after your research is complete.
Note: If ethical, legal, contractual, or technical conditions prevent you from sharing or distributing data, you may still have to submit a data management or sharing plan. Consult the agency or journal's requirements for official guidance. In this situation, your plan could explain why you cannot share data.
Many funding agencies and sponsors require a data management plan with each proposal, but any researcher or team will benefit from developing a data management plan at the beginning of a project. Developing a plan is an excellent way to identify useful and important records, optimize your data handling process, and anticipate issues that may arise in publishing, archiving, and preservation.
This guide covers topics that frequently appear in data management and data sharing plans, but each funding agency or journal has its own guidelines. Include only the information requested by the agency or sponsor in its official instructions.
Sections 2-4 of this guide provide general information and guidelines for data management plans, whereas sections 5-8 provide guidance on how to develop content for a typical data management plan.
To help you complete your plan, each topic is divided into a series of basic questions. Your answers will provide the content for your plan. Not all questions will be relevant to your research.
