Elements of a Data Management Plan
Below are the elements of your data management plan as recommended by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.
Your Data Management Plan must be 2 pages or less, you are not expected to utilize all of these elements, only those that apply to your submission.
Element | Description | Recommended? |
---|---|---|
Data description | A description of the information to be gathered; the nature and scale of the data that will be generated or collected. | Highly recommended. |
Existing data | A survey of existing data relevant to the project and a discussion of whether and how these data will be integrated. | |
Format | Formats in which the data will be generated, maintained, and made available, including a justification for the procedural and archival appropriateness of those formats. Recommended Archive Formats |
Highly recommended. |
Metadata | A description of the metadata to be provided along with the generated data, and a discussion of the metadata standards used. | Highly recommended. |
Data organization | How the data will be managed during the project, with information about version control, naming conventions, etc. | |
Quality Assurance | Procedures for ensuring data quality during the project. | |
Storage and backup | Storage methods and backup procedures for the data, including the physical and cyber resources and facilities that will be used for the effective preservation and storage of the research data. See: Archiving and Storage of Your Data |
Highly recommended. |
Security | A description of technical and procedural protections for information, including confidential information, and how permissions, restrictions, and embargoes will be enforced. | |
Responsibility | Names of the individuals responsible for data management in the research project. | |
Budget | The costs of preparing data and documentation for archiving and how these costs will be paid. Requests for funding may be included. | |
Intellectual property rights | Entities or persons who will hold the intellectual property rights to the data, and how IP will be protected if necessary. Any copyright constraints (e.g., copyrighted data collection instruments) should be noted. | Highly recommended. |
Legal requirements | A listing of all relevant federal or funder requirements for data management and data sharing. | |
Access and sharing | A description of how data will be shared, including access procedures, embargo periods, technical mechanisms for dissemination and whether access will be open or granted only to specific user groups. A timeframe for data sharing and publishing should also be provided. | Highly recommended. |
Audience | The potential secondary users of the data. | |
Selection and retention periods | A description of how data will be selected for archiving, how long the data will be held, and plans for eventual transition or termination of the data collection in the future. | |
Archiving and preservation | The procedures in place or envisioned for long-term archiving and preservation of the data, including succession plans for the data should the expected archiving entity go out of existence. Archiving and Storage of Your Data | Highly recommended. |
Ethics and privacy | A discussion of how informed consent will be handled and how privacy will be protected, including any exceptional arrangements that might be needed to protect participant confidentiality, and other ethical issues that may arise. | Highly recommended. |