Online Data Management Planning Tool Tames Data; Meets Researchers’ Funding Requirements

A group of major research insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, is part­ner­ing to develop a flex­i­ble online tool to help researchers gen­er­ate data man­age­ment plans.  This effort is in response to demands from fund­ing agen­cies, such as the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF) and the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH), that researchers plan for man­ag­ing their research data.

The part­ners in this project include DataONE at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Cura­tion Cen­ter (UC3) at the Cal­i­for­nia Dig­i­tal Library, the UCLA Library, the UCSD Libraries, the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion, the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia Library, the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Urbana-Champaign and the United Kingdom’s Dig­i­tal Cura­tion Cen­tre (DCC).

By join­ing forces, the part­ners expect to con­sol­i­date exper­tise and reduce costs in address­ing data man­age­ment needs.  The pri­mary goal of the part­ner­ship is to sim­plify the process of cre­at­ing plans while increas­ing the qual­ity of deci­sions made by fun­ders to pre-define poli­cies and infra­struc­tures that sup­port research activities.

“This tool will stream­line UC faculty’s abil­ity to pro­duce a cred­i­ble and high-quality plan for man­ag­ing data,” said CDL Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Laine Far­ley. “An impor­tant con­se­quence of that is the gen­eral rais­ing of aware­ness about the ser­vices that libraries pro­vide in data curation.”

The tool for gen­er­at­ing data man­age­ment plans (DMP) will be based on DMP Online, a soft­ware tool devel­oped by the DCC and designed to accom­mo­date dif­fer­ent fun­der require­ments. This func­tion will be tested by tai­lor­ing it to the require­ments of US research fund­ing agen­cies and the insti­tu­tions they fund.  It will be pub­licly avail­able, allow­ing researchers at all insti­tu­tions to ini­ti­ate a data man­age­ment plan quickly and pro­vide answers to var­i­ous data man­age­ment ques­tions relat­ing to their research, such as how data will be doc­u­mented through­out the research project and made avail­able for pub­lic use and poten­tial sec­ondary uses, how data qual­ity will be assured, data backup pro­ce­dures, and preser­va­tion plans.

The tool will also make the entire process eas­ier, less expen­sive, and more con­sis­tent in mov­ing research data man­age­ment for­ward at the national and inter­na­tional lev­els.  It will also aid insti­tu­tions in iden­ti­fy­ing asso­ci­ated costs and in future resource plan­ning.  The new ver­sion of the DMP is expected to be avail­able within the next sev­eral months.

“Research is an inter­na­tional activ­ity, and data man­age­ment plan­ning is also inter­na­tional in scope,” said Kevin Ash­ley, DCC direc­tor. “Fun­ders around the world already require such plans with grant appli­ca­tions or as a con­di­tion of fund­ing; many more are plan­ning to do so. The DCC is pleased to be part of this work to develop plan­ning tools that also have inter­na­tional util­ity and relevance.”

UNM received $55 mil­lion from NSF in grant fund­ing for Fis­cal Year 2010, so the poten­tial impact of the data man­age­ment require­ments on researchers is enormous.

William Mich­ener, DataONE PI at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, said “The Data Man­age­ment Plan­ning Online Tool will be a cen­ter­piece of DataONE enabling sci­en­tists to opti­mize cur­rent and future use of their data and to pro­tect their invest­ment of time and energy in data col­lec­tion and analy­sis. The tool will save time and make it easy to fol­low sci­ence best prac­tices.  I antic­i­pate that thou­sands of sci­en­tists annu­ally will add the tool to their tool­box as they develop pro­pos­als and carry out the research.”

About DataONE
The Data Obser­va­tion Net­work for Earth (DataONE) is poised to be the foun­da­tion of new inno­v­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence through a dis­trib­uted frame­work and sus­tain­able cyber­in­fra­struc­ture that meets the needs of sci­ence and soci­ety for open, per­sis­tent, robust, and secure access to well-described and eas­ily dis­cov­ered Earth obser­va­tional data. Sup­ported by the U.S. National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion, DataONE will ensure preser­va­tion and access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national sci­ence data.

Con­tact: Patri­cia Cruse, direc­tor, UC Cura­tion Cen­ter
Phone: (510) 987‑9016
E-mail: patricia.cruse@ucop.edu

Andrew Sal­lans, head, Strate­gic Data Ini­tia­tives
Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia Library
Phone: (434) 243‑2180
E-mail: als9q@virginia.edu

Local UNM con­tact:
Rebecca Koskela, exec­u­tive direc­tor, DataONE
Office (M,W,F): (505) 814‑1111
Cell & Office (T,Th):  (505) 382‑0890