Data Management & Sharing

Data management is the process of validating, organizing, protecting, maintaining, and processing scientific data to ensure its accessibility, reliability, and quality.

Proper data management is crucial for maintaining scientific rigor and research integrity. 

Data Management Plans

Submitting a data management plan is  a requirement for grant applications to many major funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), in order to improve the rigor and reproducibility of the research they fund.

See the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy and UNE’s Research Data and Research Materials Management, Sharing and Security Policy 

Having a data management plan promotes the sharing of scientific data in order to:

• Expedite the translation of research.  
• Provide robust public access to research findings
• Align with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles
• Enable validation and reproducability of research results
• Provide accessibility to high-value datasets
• Support data reuse for future research studies.

Data sharing is also of benefit to the researcher, as shared data can generate citations and the ability to track reuse. This helps increase the impact of your research by making it more visible. You may also find collaborators or research that is useful to you in future projects.  

Creating your Data Management Plan

A data management plan (DMP) is a relatively short document – no more than 2 pages. Your plan 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 and revisions will be made. Your plan should documents these changes. 

Resources for Writing Your Plan 

DMP Tool

Templates with guidance on plan elements 

Add collaborators, plan research outputs, and get a unique identifier for your plan 

Access publicly available DMPs  

Open Science Framework (OSF)

Data management and sharing plan checklist. 

National Institute for Mental Health(NIMH)

Sample data management and sharing plans

NIH Policy Explorer

See which policies apply to your research, the final DMSP policy and breakdown from NIH Data Sharing Hub. 

 UNE’s Responsible Conduct of Research Training

UNE recommends that researchers submit data to an established digital archive or repository whenever possible. We offer DUNE:DigitalUNE as our institutional repository and as a place to retain digital copies of research data and laboratory notebooks. 

Questions & Help 

Please reach out to the Office of Research Integrity with questions about data management or grant requirements.