I’ve been writing about data management plans (DMPs) for over a decade on this blog and, while sometimes it feels like I’ve already discussed this topic plenty, the universe decided to throw a curve ball and make me write about DMPs even more. Though it is more accurate to say that the U.S. government is the one throwing the curve balls at the moment.
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is implementing a new Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) template on April 27, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) will implement their new DMSP template on May 25. Both agencies are shifting away from a 2-page narrative DMP and toward DMSPs with rigid check-box/drop-down answers for a handful of questions. There will be space for a couple free-text descriptions, but otherwise, the two templates are a dramatic shift from how U.S. agencies have handled data management plans for the previous decade.
On one hand, I love the shift toward more structured DMSPs. There has been a significant amount of work done in the community over the past few years to develop machine-actionable DMPs – the idea being that machine-actionable DMPs can easily connect what’s promised with the outputs of the grant. And it looks like the new, more structured DMSPs will allow the agencies to more easily check compliance. Given the benefits of data management and sharing, I’m not against making compliance easier for everyone.
I have several concerns about the new DMSP templates, however. Due to cuts at the NSF and NIH, the roll out of the new templates has been rushed. The NSF, in particular, only provided screenshots of the new NSF DMSP template one week before the template is being required; we have to wait until the day that the templates are required to see the full templates. The lack of information about the new templates has made it particularly difficult for specialists like me to prepare researchers for meeting the new requirements.
The rush has also set best practices back. Most egregious is the guidance, shared alongside the screenshots of the new NSF template, that states that “Note that sharing through institutional resources (e.g., lab webpages) can be denoted as ‘Institutional Repository’”. The data management and sharing community has spent well over a decade trying to stop researchers from putting their data on a lab website and the 2022 Nelson memo explicitly says that research data should be shared in a data repository. The NSF’s current guidance, as quoted, is problematic and goes against all current recommended practices. This is one example of several where the new templates have not been clear or have been counter to current expected practices.
Another concern about the new DMSPs is that they are so stripped down that they have taken what is already a bureaucratic hurdle and made it into a check box. The point of writing a DMP is to help researchers think about and improve their data management sharing practices. The new paired-down templates don’t really do that. That said, a DMSP written for a grant application probably won’t ever be as beneficial as writing a living DMP, so I will continue to advocate for researchers to write living DMPs.
It’s too early to tell how the roll out of the new DMSPs templates will go for two of the biggest funding agencies of academic research in the United States. It’s going to be disruptive for a lot of people but it’s not clear yet if the templates will be a change for the better. In the meantime, I guess it helps with job security, knowing that I’m needed to help guide people through this process.
