Analyzed Data Management Plans (DMPs) from Successful University of Minnesota Grants from the National Science Foundation, 2011-2014

Abstract

Federal funding agencies are asking principal investigators (PIs) to specify their plans for describing, storing, securing, sharing, and preserving their research data in Data Management Plans (DMPs) included with their grant proposal. This change in sponsored research is best exemplified by the National Science Foundation (NSF) which in 2010 announced that all grants submitted after January 18th, 2011 must include a one- to two-page DMP with all new proposals. In order to review the plans for how University of Minnesota researchers plan to manage, store, describe, protect, and share and preserve their data, a review instrument was created and implemented by the University Libraries in the summer of 2014. Our local study of DMPs in successful NSF grant applications from January 2011 - June 2014 was opt-in by U of M PIs and the libraries collected 182 data management plans for our study, accounting for 41% of the total number of plans solicited. The deidentified data used in our analysis and our survey instrument are presented here.