The National Endowment for the Humanities now requires data management plans for Digital Humanities Implementation Grants offered through its Office of Digital Humanities. The DMPTool now supports these requirements. You’ll see the NEH Office of Digital Humanities listed as one of the options in the dropdown list when you begin to create a new data management plan. You’ll find links to NEH ODH requirements as well as general help with creating a DMP as part of grant proposal for this program.

There will be a DMPTool workshop at the Digital Library Federation Fall Forum at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore on November 2. The workshop has three goals:

1. to provide an in-depth look at the DMPTool, providing information to staff at libraries, data centers and IT organizations, who can in turn inform and train faculty members, researchers and administrators at their institutions;
2. to describe the information that institutions can provide to become contributing partners;
3. to discuss future development plans and ideas for priorities, directions and funding opportunities.

More information on the workshop is available on the DLF Fall Forum website. Attendees need to register for the DLF Forum. The workshop is limited to 40 attendees. Forum attendees should “register” for the workshop by adding a comment to the page.

This workshop will be led by participants in the DMPTool project, including Perry Willett (CDL), Günter Waibel (Smithsonian), Sherry Lake (University of Virginia) and Sarah Shreeves (University of Illinois).

We are having a demo of the DMPTool on Wednesday, October 19 at 2pm PT. This demo will introduce the DMPTool and focus on how institutions can provide information for their researchers. Institutions can provide links to resources and services, help with specific questions in data management plans, information about upcoming events or new services related to data management plans. The DMPTool uses Shibboleth for authentication, and institutions can learn how they can participate, so that researchers can log in through their campus authentication service.

Information (participants call for audio, and use web browser to view):
Phone: 1-866-740-1260 (US and Canada)
303-248-0285 (Outside US)
Web conference: http://www.readytalk.com
Access code: 6408974

70% of all PhDs awarded in the state of California for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are granted by the University of California system.  In fact, the UC system is responsible for training approximately 10,000 graduate researchers and supporting over 6,000 postdoctoral fellows in their research. The amount of data generated by these graduate students and scientists is difficult to estimate, but is surely near the petabyte range (a petabyte is a number starting with 1 and having 15 zeros after it).  Although fledgling scientists receive training in collection methods, instrument use, statistics, and the ethics of science, good data management is not often emphasized.  Without proper data management, these data are at risk of being lost.

The lack of data management training may stem from advisors themselves having poor data literacy, but this situation is likely to change with the implementation of data management plan requirements by NSF.  Principle investigators who head up a laboratory group and are  writing grant proposals are also now responsible for writing data management plans. With the assistance of the DMP Tool, these investigators will be able to construct thoughtful data management plans that can be implemented by themselves and the scientists they train.  The next generation of scientists will then be better equipped to properly document, manage, and archive their own data and those of the scientists they train.

Source for University of California statistics

Government agencies are tightening their belts due to the current economic climate. The National Science Foundation is no exception: their budget for research activities decreased by $150 million in 2011.  The logical assumption is that fewer projects will be funded, and therefore competition for the remaining funds will be fierce.

Many scientists have experienced the frustration of receiving a grant proposal review that is favorable (all “very good” or “excellent” ratings) yet is not funded.  The funding rate for NSF as a whole was at 32% in 2009, with the lowest funding rates in the Engineering and Biological Sciences directorates (25% and 28%, respectively).  Increasingly grants that are funded must be above and beyond good; they must be stellar.

As of January 18 2011, all NSF grant proposals must include a data management plan, or DMP.  This document, much like a Broader Impacts statement, is a supplement to the main body of the 15 page proposal.  Although the DMP is in its early phase of implementation, we can assume that the DMP will garner importance similar to that of the Broader Impacts statement  in awarding grants during these fiscally challenging times.

In 2010, the University of California received almost $500 million in research funds from the National Science Foundation.  This funding is in jeopardy if UC scientists are not cognizant of the importance of a good data management plan in their next NSF proposal. The DMP Tool is meant to help guide scientists in the creation of an excellent data management plan, and should be used in conjunction with talking to your discipline’s librarian about how best to structure your data organization, storage, and archiving.

Aside from the “stick” that NSF is using to encourage data management plans, there is also a “carrot”: researchers will benefit immensely from even a minimal amount of planning for their data management.  The University of California campuses are leaders among universities in receiving research funding from the National Science Foundation. To maintain our position as top-tier research institutions, it is imperative that good data management plans accomany all proposals to the NSF.

Sources:  UC Data , NSF Merit Review Document for FY 2009 , Blog from Today’s Engineer about FY 2012 budget, citing House Resolution 1 

A short video demo of the DMP Tool is now available:
http://www.screencast.com/t/OZmkKlDpy4W

The demo, lasting about 5 minutes, walks through the main features of the DMP Tool.

DataONE will be running demos of the DMP Tool at booth 605 during the Ecological Society of America Meeting,  Aug 8th – 11th, Austin, TX.  If you are there, swing by to learn more about the DMP Tool and DataONE.

The NSF Biological Sciences Directorate posted requirements for NSF BIO grant applicants on June 15, 2011. The NSF BIO Guidance on Data Management Plans is available on the NSF website as a PDF file:

Click to access BIODMP061511.pdf

DataONE will be hosting two training opportunities at the upcoming Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting.  The first will be a workshop on “How to Manage Ecological Data for Effective Use and Re-use”  for early career scientists and we will briefly introduce the DMP Tool.  The second will focus on “Creating Effective Data Management Plans for Ecological Research”  during which the DMP Tool will be introduced and covered more thoroughly.

The ESA runs Aug 7th – 12th 2011 in Austin, TX.

The University of Virginia Library has been building expertise in data management for years now. Building upon that expertise, the Scientific Data Consulting Group (SciDaC) was developed in 2010 in response to an increased need for data management support. The Scientific Data Consulting Group works with faculty and graduate student researchers across disciplines to assess their data management needs, then creates and implements plans to store and preserve that data. As more and more funding agencies require Data Management Plans, UVA’s SciDaC group is the place to go for assistance in creating Data Management Plans. Contact us now to start a conversation about your research.