Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The DMP submitted with a Horizon Europe Stage 1 application.
- Is an instance
An NIH Data Management and Sharing Plan included with a competing grant application.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A mid-project DMP update.
- Not an instance
A post-project preservation record.
Editorial commentary
The creation phase is the first stage of the DMP lifecycle: the point at which a Data Management Plan (DMP) is first drafted, almost always at grant-proposal stage and before the underlying research has actually generated data. Content written at this stage is necessarily projective — expected data types and volumes, an intended repository, a proposed sharing timetable — rather than a record of what happened. Funders and institutional reviewers assessing a plan at this stage are checking completeness, internal consistency, and plausibility against the proposed budget and methods, not verifying outcomes, because there are no outcomes yet.
A research office most often meets the creation phase when helping an investigator complete a funder’s DMP section at submission — populating a template, checking that the plan’s storage and sharing commitments are realistic given available institutional infrastructure, and flagging where a cost element needs to be added to the grant budget rather than assumed. This is also where an office decides whether to build the plan directly in machine-actionable form (via a machine-actionable DMP (maDMP) tool such as DMPRoadmap or Argos) or draft a narrative first and convert later.
How it differs from adjacent DMP concepts
- vs. DMP closeout phase — the mirror-image stage: closeout reconciles the plan against actual outputs, creation only projects them.
- vs. DMP template — the template is the question set used to elicit creation-phase content; the creation phase is the act of answering it.
- vs. DMP review — review is a quality check that is frequently applied to creation-phase drafts, but review can also happen later in the lifecycle (e.g., of a mid-project amendment).
References
- Science Europe, Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management (2021).
Checking this against the current guidance
Exactly when the DMP creation phase begins, and who is expected to be involved, differs by institution. The answer depends on which institutional process you are working to,
and the page above states the general rule.
It answers with its sources linked, so you can open each one and check it yourself, and it says so when our sources don’t cover a question. Two questions a day are free while you are signed out, no
account and no card. Everything CASRAI publishes stays free to read.
Frequently asked questions
Who should be involved during the DMP creation phase?
Best practice involves the PI, a data steward or library liaison, and sometimes IT or a repository contact, brought in early enough to catch infrastructure or licensing issues before submission.
Can the creation phase happen after a proposal is already submitted?
A DMP is normally finalized before submission, since most funders require it as part of the proposal package, but the underlying data-management decisions can and should start earlier, during project planning.
Does the creation phase differ for a renewal versus a brand-new award?
Yes — a renewal typically starts from the prior DMP and updates it, rather than creating one from scratch, which changes what ‘creation’ actually involves.
Also known as
DMP drafting phase · proposal-stage DMP
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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