Due to system maintenance, the DMPTool will be unavailable from 12am (midnight) until 9:00am (PDT) Sunday August 26 (07:00 to 16:00 UTC). During this time, the website will be unavailable and access to data management plans will be blocked.

This maintenance window is necessary to upgrade core networking infrastructure in the California Digital Library’s production data center, and will affect all CDL services. It is possible that service to the DMPTool will be restored before the scheduled end of the outage, but this cannot be guaranteed.

Please contact us at uc3@ucop.edu with any questions or concerns. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Andrew Sallans at UVa asked me if I could tell him how many data management plans have been created, by funder? It took a little digging, but with a little juggling, here’s what I find:

NSF BIO: 339
NSF SBE: 287
NSF Gen: 197
NSF ENG: 159
NSF EAR: 133
NSF EHR: 133
NSF CISE:124
NIH: 101
NEH ODH: 71
IMLS: 65
NSF CHE: 60
NSF PHY: 46
NSF DMR: 37
GBMF: 36
NSF AGS: 34
NOAA: 17
NSF AST: 15
NSF EFRI: 6

NSF BIO and NSF SBE are clearly the most popular so far.

This is based on the 1,860 plans created between Oct 17, 2011 (when we announced the availability of the DMPTool) and July 13, 2012. There are some plans that are clearly meant only as testing out the DMPTool; they include answers such as “testing” or “blah blah blah.” However, I made no attempt to determine if the plan looked “real” or not.

Another aspect is that we’ve added some funders more recently, so that they haven’t been available as long as others. How about showing the number of plans created per day that the funder template was available?

Data management plans created by funder, per day:

Here we see NSF BIO and NSF SBE still among the most used, but also see that NSF CISE and especially NIH are heavily used. They have fewer total plans than others but have not been available as long.

The DMPTool has won a Larry L. Sautter Golden Award for Innovation in Information Technology. The Sautter Awards were established by the University of California’s Information Technology Leadership Council in 2000 and awarded annually to “encourage and recognize innovative deployment of information technology in support of the University’s mission.” The award recognizes projects across the University of California that are innovative, interoperable, collaborative, usable, accessible and that promote efficiency.

The DMPTool was developed by a partnership including the California Digital Library’s UC3 in collaboration with NSF-funded DataONE project, Digital Curation Centre (UK), Smithsonian Institution, UCLA Library, UCSD Libraries, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Virginia Library. By joining together, these partners were able to consolidate their expertise to develop this tool quickly and efficiently. The primary goal of the partnership is to simplify the process for researchers of creating data management plans while providing institutions an opportunity to highlight resources and services that support researchers.

The award will be presented at the annual UC Computing Services Conference (UCCSC) at UC Berkeley in August. More information about the Sautter Awards can be found at this website: http://www.ucop.edu/irc/itlc/sautter/

As of the end of May 2012, we now have:

• 2092 unique users
• 1711 data management plans
• 52 institutions using single sign-on
• 19 institutions that have customized the DMPTool for their users

I was a little mixed up in last month’s report. We had 1809 users, not 1624, at the end of April, and 1497 plans, not 1291 (a comparison with the graph should have tipped me off–d’oh!).

At any rate, May was our third busiest month, with 283 new users. I’ve noticed that the number of people from new institutions (ie the first person from their institution) has slowed somewhat–there were only 14 in May. We’ve had people from over 400 institutions use the DMPTool so far, so it was bound to level off at some point.

Here’s a graph showing overall use as of the end of May:

I created a map of the institutions that have customized the DMPTool, either by configuring their single-signon, or adding links to local resources. There are over 50 institutions. Don’t see yours? Email us at uc3@ucop.edu for more information on how to join.

View DMPTool in a larger map

I’d like to start reporting on use stats on a regular basis. The DMPTool was launched in October 2011. As of the end of April 2012, we have:

• 1624 unique users
• 1241 data management plans
• 48 institutions using single sign-on
• 18 institutions that have customized the DMPTool for their users

Here’s a graph showing overall use as of the end of April:

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, now requires data management plans for its environmental data production projects. NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 212-15, “Management of Environment Data and Information,” states that environmental data is to be managed following a data management plan, and that managers of all environmental data production projects should write a data management plan before starting to acquire data. The DMPTool now supports the NOAA requirements–you’ll see it among the options in the dropdown box for creating a new data management plan.

Tulane just configured their campus single sign-on for the DMPTool, making them the 50th institution to do so. It means that, now, researchers at Tulane do not need to maintain a separate account within the DMPTool, but instead can login using their Tulane username and password. One fewer username and password to remember and maintain!

There are a few requirements for an institution to be able to take advantage of this service–they must be a member of the InCommon Federation, and they must have an InCommon-compliant identity provider. InCommon has almost 300 members, including not just universities, but also research labs and other organizations. Please contact us at uc3@ucop.edu if you are interested in using Single Sign-on for the DMPTool–we can get you in touch with the right people on your campus or in your organization.

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) held a webinar on April 27 on the DMPTool. Two presenters, Andrew Sallans (University of Virginia Libraries) and Jonathan Crabtree (UNC Chapel Hill–Odum Institute for Social Science Research), with moderator John Burger of ASERL, spoke on how their two institutions have integrated the DMPTool into their services supporting researchers. The webinar is available at: http://vimeo.com/41300331.

We’ve added links to DataBib, a registry of repositories for research data. DataBib is a collaboration between Purdue and Penn State, and the registry describes and links to hundreds of data repositories. Some repositories accept data submissions in particular disciplines, so if you’re looking for an appropriate place for your data, DataBib may help you find repositories in your field. More info on DataBib at their website: http://databib.org