A data management plan (DMP) is a document, or a paragraph in your research proposal, in which you describe for a specific research project what data you plan to collect, how you are going to store and manage the data during the project and how the data will be shared and archived after the project is finished.
A data management plan (or paragraph) makes research data management concrete and practicable: what are you going to do and how? It saves you time, work and money: by elaborating the management of research data at an early stage, you reduce the chances of having to face unpleasant surprises later in your research. It helps you identify the best tools for your research, such as computer facilities like network storage or specific hardware.
In a data management plan, you provide answers to such questions as:
- What data are you going to collect? What type of data or what file formats? How many?
- Where and how will you store your data? What backup methods and procedures do you use?
- How are you going to organize, document, and describe your data?
- Who gets access to your data? When? How are you going to manage access?
- What data will be archived when the project is finished? Where and for how long?
- Will the archived data be made available to others? When? Under what license?
- Who is responsible for the management of your data?
A DMP is a living document. It may well be that you are not able to answer some of these questions at first, or only roughly, for example, because you wish to obtain someone's advice. Or it may turn out that it is better to handle things differently than originally planned. You can always adapt or add to your DMP.
There are various templates and checklists available for drawing up a data management plan, these can be found in DMPonline-Erasmus. Here you can log in with your institutional credentials, select the (funder specific) format you want, and fill out the questions. You can work on the DMP together with your colleagues by inviting them and leaving comments next to each question when necessary.
EUR DMP template and guidelines
There is a EUR specific DMP template, which can be completed using DMPonline-Erasmus. The template was created by the RDM specialists at UL/EDSC and the data stewards. It has been approved by NWO and ZonMw and it is also the default DMP format supported by the EUR.
Below you can find the Word version of the EUR DMP template version 4.4 and guidelines to accompany this template:
Support
Do you need help, or do you want more information on DMP’s or Research Data Management in general? Contact the Research Data Steward at your school (see below). In DMPonline-Erasmus, you can also hit the ‘Request Feedback’ button once you finished a DMP draft. You will then receive feedback from your Research Data Steward.
Contact information
| Nils Arlinghaus (data steward) | ESHCC ESPhil
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Lizette Guzman Ramirez (data steward) | ERIM (RSM & ESE) | |
| Kees den Heijer (data steward) | ESL | |
| Eduard Klapwijk (data steward) | ESSB | |
| Panagiota Polydoratou (data steward) | ISS
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| Anna Volkova (data steward) | ESHPM | |
Erasmus Data Service Centre (EDSC) | All schools |
010-408 12 32 |
| EUR Data Repository | All schools | datarepository@eur.nl |
Disclaimer
The content of this page has been adapted - with kind permission - from the information provided by the University of Amsterdam RDM pages and the University of Groningen Digital Competence Centre.
This page was last updated in December 2021. Did you find a broken link or (seemingly) incorrect information? Please send an email with the title 'Website content' to datasteward[at]eur.nl.