• University of Bath Data Management Plan Template
• Writing your data management plan : University of Bath DMP template guidance

We used an iterative method to develop these documents, going back and forth between members of the project team and a number of researchers to produce a template that is functional and fills the needs of researchers as well as the institution and our funders. Since most other UK funders already provide a template, we focused on the needs of our EPSRC-funded researchers, but drew heavily on the policies and templates of all the other RCUK funders, as well as the DCC Checklist for a Data Management Plan.

The template

The template itself is available in two versions: a blank version, and one with suggested possible answers. The latter was developed based on feedback from researchers (who wanted a simple way to get started on a DMP) and could potentially be used in a multiple-choice fashion to quickly draft a DMP which covers the full range of issues.

We suggest a two-stage process to developing a data management plan using the institutional template:

1. Pre-award: when applying for funding, use the multiple-choice template to quickly produce a basic DMP and identify resources which may need to be included in the project budget;
2. Post-award: after funding has been granted, review the initial template and fill in further details as appropriate for the project in question — at this point issues should be referred to the relevant University support department (e.g. computer services) or third-party body (e.g. data archives).

This will ensure that all potential issues are surfaced at an early stage, while allowing the researchers to focus on the more important scientific aspects of the bid. By building up the DMP in several stages, each of which is itself only a small step, we hope to lower the barrier to entry for data management planning.

The guidance

The guidance document accompanying the template serves two purposes:

1. To give advice on how each question should be answered; and
2. To explain why each question is important.

Our intention is to help researchers make informed decisions about both what should go into their DMP and what they can leave out if it does not apply to them. We also intend this document to signpost specific infrastructure and support services that researchers may not be fully aware of. We have therefore taken care to highlight relevant University support services and policies for each question.

Future work

We have begun work on specialised versions of the template to fulfil particular sets of requirements, by narrowing down the questions asked and giving additional guidance where appropriate.

All of the funders we work with have slightly different requirements and emphases for data management plans, so by tailoring our own template to suit the needs of each funder (e.g. by being selective about the questions that are included), we hope to be able to maintain a single set of guidance which will apply to all funders.

We are also developing a version of the template to help researchers develop a standing research data policy for their research group or department. We hope to implement a mechanism to allow these local policies to be published on the web, so that each project DMP can focus on project-specific issues and simply refer to the standing policy anything more generic.

We’ve started using the template as part of our main data management workshop for PGRs, and we’ve also had a group of Doctoral Training Centre students complete DMPs using it as well. Feedback from both groups has been very positive.

You can access both documents from our institutional repository:

• Data Management Plan for Postgraduate Researchers
• Data Management Planning Guidance for Postgraduate Researchers

read more

First off there's a US study to demystify the data management requirements of research funders. This builds on the DCC's policy analysis to extend the classification and add concepts we've not covered. I hope to look at this in more detail next month to see how we can rework our analysis to suit.

read more

The session was structured similarly to our last workshop, though without the extended hands-on section on data management planning. The loss of this section was down to time pressures (we had an hour less this time).

We started by showing a series of statements about research data management, such as "I am satisfied that my data is safe", and asking the participants to rate (anonymously using clickers) how much they agreed or disagreed with each statement. The answers gave us an opportunity to start some discussions and get a picture of what the current level of knowledge was.

Cathy then gave a more formal presentation (slides available here) covering the major aspects of research data management with me pitching in on more technical bits.

We finished up by revisiting the statements from the start of the session to see how opinions had changed, and handing out some leaflets from the DCC.

Feedback

Feedback from the attendees was overwhelmingly positive:

• 95% of respondents were satisfied with the course;
• 91% would recommend the course to others;
• 95% found it relevant to their needs.

Some interesting answers to the question "What was most useful?" include:

• "Need to plan for good management"
• "Reminding me of how easy it would be to lose my data and how I should look after it better"
• "Notes on data cycle, info on making data public"
• "Knowing where to go for help, helping to focus my data management plan"

Actions that participants said they would take as a result of the workshop fell mostly into two categories:

• "Prepare a management plan"; and
• "Back up my data"

Although we don’t know whether anyone carried out their actions, this was very encouraging to read, as our message had clearly got through.

Room for improvement

One participant felt that there was a bias towards science. This is understandable, since both Cathy and I have science backgrounds, and science/engineering is the main focus of Research360, but we’ll see what we can do to rectify this.

Another comment referred to "lack of more contemporary ways of storing data, e.g. Dropbox". We’d intentionally steered clear of Dropbox, as the official University stance on cloud storage is still being decided. Whatever that decision turns out to be, we’ll need to deal with Dropbox and other cloud tools.

There was a request for more group discussion, and I think this would be a valuable addition, so we’ll try to make the next session a bit more interactive. Group discussions could usefully focus on differences and similarities between disciplines, for example, as I think people in different subjects would have quite a lot of pre-existing knowledge that they could share.

I’d also like to give the participants something concrete to do after they’ve left the workshop. This could be something specific like "write a data management plan", but I think there would be more likelihood of these actions being carried out if the participants take some ownership. One way to achieve this would be to wrap up the session with an action-planning section and ask each student to define their own data management goal or goals.

Reaching out to staff

Although the session was also open to research staff, only one staff member registered to attend and in the end they didn’t turn up.

Helping busy research staff to gain new skills is a difficult task. They have many demands on their time, pulling in many different directions, and many already work far more than their contracted hours.

We aim to deal with this in a number of ways:

• Providing an e-learning module which researchers can study in their own time at their own pace;
• Developing a website with concise and practical guidance, structured around specific tasks and situations;
• Reaching out in a variety of different ways, including:
  • A single point of contact email address for all inquiries relating to research data — this is tied into the university request tracker system, so an individual requests can be passed on to the team best placed to help;
  • Presentations to Deans and Heads of Department by Professor Matthew Davidson, chair of the Research Data Steering Group and Associate Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Science, as well as an active researcher himself;

We’re also in discussions with the professional services around the University to understand (and help them understand) how research data management fits into their roles and how we can provide the support they need.

• View slides from this session

Read more

This template is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

We welcome comments and suggestions for improvements, and we’d love to hear from anyone who finds it useful. I’ll be updating it soon based on feedback from our students.

We split the students into smaller groups, and assigned each group a different template. We then allowed them about an hour to complete as much as they could, while hovering around to answer questions and make note of the discussions the students were having. After this, we then used an audience response system (ARS or “clickers”) to gather feedback on how useful the templates were, using the votes from the clickers as a starting point for discussion.

The templates

DMPonline

We used the “GenInst” template in DMPonline as an example of an institutional template. As this template is aimed at Principle Investigators, students were told to skip any questions that didn’t seem relevant.

The students were immediately put off by the amount of detail they were asked to input, though on a positive note, they definitely felt that this was the most comprehensive template! None of the students using this template got anywhere near to finishing it.

The students reported that very little of what they were being asked felt relevant to them, and that for at least some of the questions it was difficult to understand what they were being asked for.

DataTrain post-graduate DMP form

This is a single-page template developed as part of the DataTrain project and now available via the Archaeology Data Service.

This was found to be the quickest and easiest template to fill in, and all of the students attempting this one completed it fully. However, not all of the students felt that it was sufficiently comprehensive.

This view is borne out by a review of the completed plans: it seems that the questions as phrased don’t bring out issues like backup and security.

Expanded post-graduate DMP form

This was developed specifically for this session as an expanded version of the DataTrain form, as an attempt to provide more structure and elicit more detailed answers.

Although this form took longer to complete, most of the students managed to finish it, and felt that it was comprehensive enough.

However not all of the students found it completely relevant, and some found some of the questions difficult to understand — both of these could probably be improved by some rephrasing.

Twenty questions about your data

This is a set of questions devised by David Shotton of Oxford University. They are arranged under the headings What, Where, How, When, Who and Why, and include examples of possible responses to each question.

These questions were considered to be mostly relevant and easy to understand, and the students had no problem completing them in the time available. The example responses made it easier to understand what was required for each question.

The only real problem was in the ordering of the questions. Because they were arranged under What, Where, etc., the students found it difficult at times to see how the questions related to each other. Perhaps because of this, the students were undecided as to whether it was comprehensive enough.

Update: Now available on the web — David Shotton’s Twenty Questions for Research Data (now restructured based on this feedback)

Discussion

Getting the template right

The number of students trying each template was very small (2–3), so it’s difficult to draw concrete conclusions at this stage, but they have given us some hints as to how to proceed.

The DMPonline approach is attractive, because it is easy to access (being web-based) and comprehensive (mapping directly onto the DCC checklist). However, there isn’t currently a template which seems appropriate for PG students — far too much detail is required, and some of the questions that are relevant are phrased in terms that research students don’t really understand.

DMPonline is specifically designed to allow custom templates to be added easily, so it should be possible to greatly improve this situation with some work. In particular, it will be necessary to either reword some of the questions or provide some detailed guidance to clarify what each one is asking for — it became apparent from some of the discussion that part of the perceived irrelevance of some questions came from difficulties understanding them.

It would be useful to be able to not only specify which questions are included in a DMPonline template, but also what order the questions appear in so that they better mirror the research workflow and relate to the aspects of data management that students will already have some experience of.

The students fared better with the shorter templates, managing for the most part to complete them. The DataTrain template, seems a good option to fill in as part of an introductory DMP training session, but needs to be augmented with further prompts, though these could perhaps be administered to the students later as their understanding of their project improves.

The structure of the expanded DMP form appeared to aid students in working through all of the questions, with the resulting plans being fairly comprehensive, while the style of the questions in the Twenty Questions template, with example responses given, made it very easy to understand. These strengths could be usefully combined to produce a better template.

Action planning

One thing common to all of these tools is that they focus on recording facts about the researcher’s data. This is valuable, but doesn’t necessarily lead to action — too often, a data management plan is seen as something that is written at the start of a project then filed away.

For PG student training, we are more concerned with students developing the skills for data management rather than having a comprehensive data management audit for a project. It therefore seems that an action planning approach might be worth trying, along these lines:

• Where am I now?
• Where do I need to be?
• What do I need to do to get there?

with the emphasis placed more on the third point than the first two. This will lead to a plan which is much easier to execute, and hopefully encourage the student to review it periodically by making it easy to measure progress against the plan.