New Data Management Plans: The Essentials
15 May 2018
Information for researchers
The University have recently introduced some changes to how you create Data Management Plans (DMPs). DMPs help you plan what data or supporting information you will collect, how you will handle it, whether you can share your data publicly and ultimately save you time. They can also help you meet any data protection obligations. DMPs are required for every new research project at The University of Manchester and by most research funders. The University has moved to a new institutional data management planning tool, DMPonline. It has a more intuitive interface than the existing tool, up to date advice and you can create plans with external collaborators.
Fewer forms to fill in
Support services from across the University have worked together to make sure that you’re not entering the same information twice. The new DMP form is slightly longer than the previous form but will be used by the Ethics Review system, assist with data protection requirements and allow IT to plan how much storage will be required. You can find the DMP number for inclusion in the research approval form at the end of the URL of your plan in DMPonline.
Existing Data Management Plans
Many researchers have DMPs for their current research projects on the University’s DMP tool, so the existing tool will be maintained for at least the next year at which point we will assess usage and either continue to maintain the existing tool or export existing plans. You can still edit your plans in the existing tool, but you now cannot create new plans.
Feedback and support
The Data Management Outline section of all DMPs will be reviewed by the Research Data Management service team. If you would like feedback on your full DMP, especially those for grant applications, you can ask for this by clicking on the ‘Request feedback’ button on the ‘Share’ tab in DMP online.
Further information:
- You can find out more about data management planning via www.manchester.ac.uk/researchdata
- Please send any questions about how to plan your data management to the Research Data Management team at researchdata@manchester.ac.uk.