We have added two new templates to the DMPTool: a data management plan template for the US Department of Agriculture – National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) and a data sharing template for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

USDA-NIFA
On February 22, 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the Executive Office of the President issued a memorandum to all agencies to develop guidelines to increase access to the results of publicly-funded scientific research. The USDA recently posted its “Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to Results of USDA-funded Scientific Research” (November 7, 2014).

One of the USDA’s implementation milestones is a pilot project requiring Data Management Plans (DMPs). NIFA, a federal agency within the USDA was chosen to pilot DMPs. The document entitled “Data Management Plan for NIFA-Funded Research Projects” provides general background and guidance regarding this pilot activity. The information from the DMP 2015 pilot will inform the USDA’s Mainstream implementation (2016-2017) of providing public access to digital scientific data.

NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also released “The NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results” in response to the OSTP memorandum.

The information in this document pertains to both extramural grantees and intramural researchers and contractors. According to the plan “extramural” grantees are only subject to the policy described in section 7.1.1:

This existing policy (“NOAA Data Sharing Policy for Grants and Cooperative Agreements” revised May 29, 2012) requires that proposals from extramural groups include a plan for making data publicly accessible… The policy refers to “data sharing plans,” which are similar to the “data management plans” required by National Science Foundation (NSF) grantees but are less comprehensive than the DM plans required for NOAA intramural projects… The existing policy refers only to data access (“sharing”) and not long- term archiving for potential future users.

The current data sharing policy will be revised during FY2015, a legal review will be performed in FY2016 Q1, and provisions will take effect in FY2016 Q2. A new template for data sharing will be developed by NOAA prior to the requirement effective date. When available, it will be updated in the DMPTool. Until then, researchers should use the NOAA Data Sharing Plan available in the tool.

Based on their responses to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo, there are no immediate changes for data management and sharing plans from the National Science Foundation (NSF) or National Institutes of Health (NIH–a division of the Department of Health & Human Services), at this time. See the previous Blog post for more information on the OSTP memos.

The DMP templates for all NSF divisions/directorates and the NIH in the DMPTool are still current.

NSF Public Access Plan: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15052/nsf15052.pdf
NIH Public Access Plan: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/NIH-Public-Access-Plan.pdf

In their access plan, the NSF has clarified a few requirements. These clarifications have been added to the NSF Generic template in the DMPTool in the Instructions and Guidance section for those specific requirements (questions).

The public access plan for NIH emphasizes its current policies for data sharing and on data management plans. It then spells out “further steps under consideration”. According to the public access plan (dated February 2015):

This document describes NIH’s plans to build upon and enhance its long standing efforts to increase access to scholarly publications and digital data resulting from NIH-funded research.

The DMPTool team will keep you informed as these steps are finalized.