The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have issued a Data Mangement and Sharing Policy, effective January 25, 2023.
The purpose of this policy is to promote the sharing of scientific data in order to provide robust public access to research, and follow FAIR principles. It is part of an effort by NIH to improve the rigor and reproducibility of science funded by the agency. The policy states that sharing scientific data accelerates biomedical research discovery, in part by enabling validation of research results, providing accessibility to high-value datasets, and promoting data reuse for future research studies. NIH believes that data sharing can help expedite the translation of research. Data sharing can also be a big benefit to the researcher, as shared data should generate citations and the ability to track reuse. This could help increase the visibility and impact of your research. By making your research more visible, you could also find more collaborators. Or find data that is useful to you in future research projects.
Requirements
There are only two requirements: submit a data management and sharing plan AND comply with the plan you submit.
A data management plan (DMP) is a relatively short document – no more than 2 pages for those submitted with grants under this policy. It should describe what data is being generated, and how it will be described, shared and accessed.
Your DMP should be thought of as a living document. It is expected that your plan might evolve as your research does, revisions can be made. The important part is that the plan documents these changes.
Resources for Writing Your Plan
- DMP Tool, where you can:
- view templates with guidance on plan elements
- Add collaborators, plan research outputs, and get a unique identifier for your plan
- Check out publicly available DMPs
- Open Science Framework (OSF)’s Data Management and Sharing Plan checklist.
- National Institute for Mental Health(NIMH)’s Sample Data Management and Sharing Plans & other Example DMS plans
- NIH Policy Explorer to help you see which policies apply to your research, the final DMSP policy and breakdown from NIH Data Sharing Hub.
- Be in touch with UNE’s Responsible conduct of research trainers if you are seeking more help.