How Do I Manage Research Data at Penn State College of Medicine?

When starting a data management plan, think about the various goals of a data lifecycle.  For a given research project, issues   surrounding data collection, storage, organization, documentation, preservation, and distribution should be ascertained.

Consider the following questions:

• What format will be required to store and read the data?
• What is the size of the data and will it continue to grow?
• Is there sensitive or identifying information in the data?  What about privacy?
• Will the data be re-used for a different project or another purpose?
• How long will the data be preserved?
• Who can have access to the data and how will it be shared?

 More complete checklists with other considerations can be found in the resources below.  Not all aspects will apply to every project.  Please be sure to check with your funder's requirements.

• UK Data Archive
• Dartmouth Guide for NSF Data

Data Management Plan examples from DataOne.org  https://www.dataone.org/data-management-planning

The DMPTool has publicly available examples of DMPs

ICPSR guidelines and examples  (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research)

The National Institutes of Health have various data sharing policies depending on factors such as funding amount and type of data, among other requirements.  See their website for more information.  NIH Data Sharing Policies

The National Science Foundation also requires data sharing as part of their data management plans.  Read more NSF data sharing.