A data management plan (DMP) is a concise cradle-to-grave “life cycle” narrative for the products of your scholarship that describe how the research data will be collected, stored, analyzed, preserved, shared, and deleted as part of Bates Commitment to Openness in Intellectual Inquiry, Research, and Education. A good DMP promotes open access to non-classified research data, increases productivity, reduces security risks and costs, and allows access for sharing and possible re-use among researchers. This plan documents: 

1. the kind of things you will generate through your scholarly activities and 
2. how you will securely store those products, as well as 
3. an explicit description of how you will make the products of your scholarship available to others

A DMSP helps ensure protection of research data during and after projects, increasing productivity and reducing security risks and costs. Good data management practices are applicable to all research data.

Many funding agencies require a DMP document for projects involving data collection as part of a grant proposal. In addition, most funders (even those that don’t require a DMP at the time of submission) have record retention policies that extend years beyond submission of the final grant reports. By accepting an award, you are committing both yourself and Bates College to an obligation that could conceivably extend beyond your time with the college. We want to make sure you and Bates have the necessary resources to manage these commitments, now and in the future.

Our policy streamlines college support for good research data management practices by coordinating support across groups within the college, creating a common understanding of expectations for data handling within and outside of the college, and meets funding, ethical, and legal obligations.

• Descriptions of your anticipated scholarly products and associated metadata
• Descriptions of your storage plan(s) for your scholarly products
• Descriptions of who can access you scholarship
• Descriptions of how you will address a Co-PI or collaborator leaving the project

This online worksheet should help organize the information for your DMP narrative. Your answers will be shared with SPaRC and appropriate members of ILS including the Director of Network and Infrastructure Services, the Director for Curricular and Research Computing, and the Science and Data Librarian. 

Per the Bates Research Data Management and Sharing Policy, at Bates

• Researchers with externally- or internally-funded research projects that produce research data must have a DMSP.
  • Externally funded projects include those supported by an award from the government (e.g. NSF) or a foundation (e.g. Russell Sage Foundation).
  • Internally funded projects are those supported with funding from Bates designated to support a specific project (e.g. BFDF project)
• A DMPS is strongly encouraged for all other projects that will generate research data

Paste in final text as agreed upon

As you work with Bates SPaRC and/or ILS to develop your data management plan, we will help define the appropriate scope of materials that are considered research dataproducts for the purposes of Bates’ Research Data Management Plan  covered by this policy. 

On a federal level, research data is defined by the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (2 CFR 200.315) in the following way:

“Research data is defined as the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings, but not any of the following: preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, or communications with colleagues. This “recorded” material excludes physical objects (e.g., laboratory samples). Research data also do not include:

• (A) Trade secrets, commercial information, materials necessary to be held confidential by a researcher until they are published, or similar information which is protected under law; and
• (B) Personnel and medical information and similar information the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, such as information that could be used to identify a particular person in a research study.” (emphasis added)

Here at Bates, our definition of research data is broader.  We define research data as At Bates College, the information collected, generated, or derived in physical or electronic form during the course of research conducted at Bates, under the auspices of Bates, or using Bates resources is considered research data.

Examples of Research Data Types*

• Documents (text, Word), spreadsheets
• Laboratory notebooks, field notebooks, diaries
• Questionnaires, transcripts, codebooks
• Digital media (audio, photographic, and video recordings)
• Protein or genetic sequences
• Spectra
• Test responses
• Slides, artifacts, specimens, samples
• Database contents (video, audio, text, images)
• Mathematical models, algorithms, scripts
• Contents of an application (input, output, logfiles for analysis software,codebooks, simulation software, schemas)
• Methodologies, protocols, and workflows
• Metadata required for reproduction, interpretation, and contextualization of research data

Bates’ and your interest in data management may encompass more than this list. If you are unsure what is considered “Research data” in your work, please reach out to Bates SPaRC and/or ILS with questions. *

*adapted from NC State University Libraries “Defining Research Data”

Complete the DMSP Worksheet. The worksheet will lead you through a series of questions to help you think through and collect all the information that is needed for a comprehensive DMSP.

You don’t need to complete the entire worksheet in one sitting. You’ll be able to save your work at any time and come back to it later.

It’s okay if you don’t know the answers to all the questions! You can think of the worksheet as a good mechanism for starting a conversation with ILS and SPaRC. If you don’t know an answer, just say so, and we’ll help you figure it out!

When you hit “submit”, copies of the prompts and responses will be emailed to you and appropriate members of SPaRC and ILS.  A team from SPaRC and ILS will review your responses and, if necessary, contact you with follow up questions. In either case, ILS will work with you to identify the resources, either in-house or 3rd party, you need to properly manage your data.

If a complete data management plan is required as part of your proposal, SPaRC will help you format your answers into document to submit to the funder.  If your proposal is awarded, SPaRC will work with you at the time of award to make sure your DMP is up to date and remains appropriate for your research.  

On an annual basis for the duration of your project, you will be asked to complete an Annual Update worksheet to ensure that your plan is still appropriate for your project and to communicate any changes to your data management needs to ILS.  You will be asked to review and provide any updates to the types and amounts of data you are generating or anticipate generating and your plans for sharing your data. You will also be asked to share the location(s) of your data.  If at any other point there are changes in your data management needs, please inform ILS.  This can be done by completing the annual update form outside the yearly cycle.”