A data management plan (DMP) is a formal document you create that describes how you plan to manage your research data throughout your research project, including how you plan data collection, documentation, storage and backup, preservation, sharing and reuse, and protection of sensitive data. A DMP is a living document that will require regular review and revision throughout your research project.
Whenever you collect data you will have a basic plan or strategy to manage that data. You determine how formal or informal that plan needs to be. It can be as simple as a shared document between you and your team where you will determine what data you will collect and how. A simple plan with some form of documentation is necessary to ensure you and your team are all on the same page to avoid repeated work or collecting unusable data. A formal DMP may not be necessary for your project but may be required by certain publishers or funders.
The federal granting Tri-Agencies of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) encourage grant applicants to complete data management plans (DMPs) as an essential step in research project design. For specific funding opportunities, the agencies may require DMPs to be submitted to the appropriate agency at the time of application.
The Tri-Agencies encourage grant applicants to use standardized tools to develop their DMPs, such as the Portage Network’s DMP Assistant.
The following DMP Exemplars are available in Portage's Training Resources. Please check the list for more examples.
Portage Network has created several Data Management Plan Templates for a variety of different data types, including:
To create a Data Management Plan using one of these templates in the DMP Assistant
To view these templates as PDF documents or use them in Word:
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