Data Management Plans

Objectives

💡 You understand the importance of Data Management Plans (DMPs) for research projects.
💡 You can identify key components that should be included in a comprehensive DMP.
💡 You can explain how DMPs support FAIR research data management practices.
💡 You can use tools like RDMO to create and maintain a Data Management Plan.
💡 You understand funder requirements and institutional support for data management planning.

Exercises

NoteExercise 3: Your DMP

Exercise: Your DMP

Imagine you are about to start a new research project. You will create a Data Management Plan that covers all data-related aspects of your project. Brainstorm what should be included in this plan, taking into account the specifics of your research discipline.

NoteExercise 1: Room for improvement?

Exercise: Room for improvement?

Source: DFG Checklist, section 1: Data description

Questions: How does your project generate new data? Is existing data reused? Which data types (in terms of data formats like image data, text data, or measurement data) arise in your project and in what way are they further processed? To what extent do these arise, or what is the anticipated data volume?

Given answer in a DMP:

“The sample data is recorded and organized using specific software. One to three GB of data will be generated.”

Your task: Is there anything to improve? Is there anything missing in this answer?

NoteExercise 2: RDMO

Exercise: RDMO

Use RDMO to start creating a Data Management Plan — either for your own research project or for a fictional project.

1. Log in to RDMO: RDMO Demo or RDMO at UHH
2. Create a new project.
3. Work through the questions, thinking carefully about:
   • What types of data will you collect or generate?
   • Which file formats will you use?
   • How will you organize and name files?
   • What metadata and identifiers will you use?
   • Where will you publish your data and under what conditions?

Slides

NoteHow can I download the slides as a PDF file?

To export the slides to PDF, do the following:

1. Toggle into Print View using the E key (or using the Navigation Menu).
2. Open the in-browser print dialog (CTRL/CMD+P).
3. Change the Destination setting to Save as PDF.
4. Change the Layout to Landscape.
5. Change the Margins to None.
6. Enable the Background graphics option.
7. Click Save.

Note: This feature has been confirmed to work in Google Chrome, Chromium as well as in Firefox.

Here’s what the Chrome print dialog would look like with these settings enabled:

These instructions were copied from the Quarto documentation (MIT License) and slightly modified.

Resources

• MPDL FAIR Research Data Management Tutorial
• Research Data Management (RDM) plan session by Laura Meier
• Your institutional RDM services!

Acknowledgements

These contents are based on slides for the Research Data Management (RDM) plan session by Laura Meier (0000-0003-1368-2306), University Library of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, presented during the LMU Open Science Summer School 2025.

Source: https://github.com/laura-tte/OSS-25-DMPs/blob/main/README.md

Reused with modifications under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.