Data Management Plan (DMP)

Data management planning is one of the key processes in planning your research.

Most of research funders require a DMP as part of the funding application process (e.g. Business Finland), or after funding has been approved (e.g. Research Council of Finland, formerly the Academy of Finland) or during the first six months of the project (e.g. Horizon Europe). The Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for making decisions on data management and open access to research data.

However, creating a DMP for your project is always a good idea, even if it is not mandatory or if you will not be able to provide access to your data!

A DMP should be considered a ‘living’ document - it is ideally created before or at the start of a research project, but updated when necessary as the project progresses. Planning for data management is therefore not a one-off event, but a process. The plan is a reference document for everyone working on your project - make sure that you follow and revise it during your work, and when finishing a project.

DMP questions

• How the project proposes to collect data and use existing data
• How the project follows FAIR principles
• The methodologies and standards that will be applied
• How the data will be curated and preserved
• The ownership and user rights of the data used or produced by the project
• How the data produced will be open for use by other researchers during the project and after its conclusion
• Research ethics and information security
• Costs of managing data.

Informed consent of human subjects to research is an essential part of data management. The appropriate anonymisation of personal information enables the opening of otherwise confidential research data. Make sure to prepare a description of the registration of personal information. Read more about the handling of personal data.

Need help with creating DMP? 

Contact Data Support Network by [email protected] and we will help you to prepare DMP either for your application or your research project! More information about the data management requirements of research funders can be found in Funders’ open science requirements.

Recommendations

• Make your data FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
• More information about the data management requirements of funders can be found in Funders’ open science requirements.
• Select an intended data repository, and the repository guidelines will offer you options for metadata, file formats, and licenses needed to use that repository. Some repositories, such as FSD, offer services and personal guidance, and it is helpful to contact them in the planning stage.
• When applying for funding, please read the pages of research services.

Links to DMP guides

• Aalto University DMP Training Worksheet
• Creating a DMP for the Research Council of Finland (former Academy of Finland) (Guide)
• Finnish national instructions for planning the management of confidential and personal data
• Data Management Checklist (by FAIRdata)
• Guidelines on FAIR Data Management in Horizon 2020
• Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Horizon 2020
• Discussion on FAIR data principles
• Finnish Social Science Data Archive Data Management Guidelines
• DMP checklist (Data Curation Centre) 
• Sherpa Juliet enables researchers to see funders' conditions for open access publication and data archiving.