Appendix 1: Data Management Plan Template

Data Collection

• What types of data will you collect, create, link to, acquire and/or record?
• What file formats will your data be collected in? Will these formats allow for data re-use, sharing and long-term access to the data?
• What conventions and procedures will you use to structure, name and version-control your files to help you and others better understand how your data are organized?

Documentation and Metadata

• What documentation will be needed for the data to be read and interpreted correctly in the future?
• How will you make sure that documentation is created or captured consistently throughout your project?
• If you are using a metadata standard and/or tools to document and describe your data, please list here.

Storage and Backup

• What are the anticipated storage requirements for your project, in terms of storage space (in megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, etc.) and the length of time you will be storing it?
• How and where will your data be stored and backed up during your research project?
• How will the research team and other collaborators access, modify, and contribute data throughout the project?

Preservation

• Where will you deposit your data for long-term preservation and access at the end of your research project?
• Indicate how you will ensure your data is preservation ready. Consider preservation-friendly file formats, ensuring file integrity, anonymization and de-identification, inclusion of supporting documentation.

Sharing and Reuse

• What data will you be sharing and in what form? (e.g. raw, processed, analyzed, final).
• Have you considered what type of end-user license to include with your data?
• What steps will be taken to help the research community know that your data exists?

Responsibilities and Resources

• Identify who will be responsible for managing this project’s data during and after the project and the major data management tasks for which they
  will be responsible.
• How will responsibilities for managing data activities be handled if substantive changes happen in the personnel overseeing the project’s data,
  including a change of Principal Investigator?
• What resources will you require to implement your data management plan? What do you estimate the overall cost for data management to be?

Ethics and Legal Compliance

• If your research project includes sensitive data, how will you ensure that it is securely managed and accessible only to approved members of the project?
• If applicable, what strategies will you undertake to address secondary uses of sensitive data?
• How will you manage legal, ethical, and intellectual property issues?

– Adapted from the Portage Template, licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.