DMPonline: DCC Data Management Plan Tool

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DMPonline is the UK Digital Curation Centre’s (DCC) hosted instance of the DMPRoadmap platform, providing structured Data Management Plan (DMP) authoring for UK and international institutions, built against funder-specific templates.

How it works and who it’s for

DMPonline is free to the individual end user for basic plan creation, regardless of institutional affiliation — a researcher can create an account and start a plan without an institutional subscription. Institutions separately pay a tiered subscription (scaled by size and research intensity) to unlock template customization, local institutional guidance text embedded directly into the plan-writing workflow, and usage analytics for their own research office. This two-tier structure — free individual access, paid institutional enhancement — is a common pattern among not-for-profit DMP tools and distinguishes the underlying access model from a purely commercial SaaS product.

DMPRoadmap: the shared platform underneath

DMPonline runs on DMPRoadmap, an open-source platform. The same underlying software also powers other national DMP tools operated independently by different organisations, including DMPTool (the University of California Curation Center/CDL’s US-focused deployment) and Argos (OpenAIRE’s European deployment). A locally installed copy of DMPRoadmap branded under a different institutional name is still, functionally, the same software as DMPonline — the distinction between them is branding and hosting, not underlying capability.

Examples

A Russell Group university maintains an institutional DMPonline account hosting plans for all UKRI-funded staff, using templates the university has customized with its own local data-management guidance. A funder such as Wellcome Trust makes a specific DMPonline template available to its grant applicants, pre-structured around Wellcome’s own required DMP sections.

What DMPonline is not

A locally installed, independently branded copy of the underlying DMPRoadmap software is the same platform technically, but is not DMPonline itself — DMPonline specifically refers to the DCC’s own hosted instance. Argos, OpenAIRE’s DMPRoadmap-based deployment for European researchers, is likewise a separate service built on the same shared open-source codebase, not DMPonline under another name.

DMPonline vs. DMPTool

DMPonline (DCC, UK-centred) and DMPTool (California Digital Library, US-centred) are the two most widely used DMPRoadmap deployments, and are frequently compared directly by institutions choosing between them. See the dedicated DMPTool vs. DMPonline comparison for a fuller side-by-side, and the guide to using DMPTool for NSF/NIH plans and DMP template and structure guide for related practical guidance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DMPonline free to use?

Yes, for individual basic plan creation, regardless of institutional affiliation. Institutions pay a separate tiered subscription to unlock template customization, embedded local guidance, and usage analytics.

Is DMPonline the same software as DMPTool?

They run on the same underlying open-source platform, DMPRoadmap, but are separately operated, independently branded services — DMPonline by the UK’s Digital Curation Centre, DMPTool by the California Digital Library. See the DMPTool vs. DMPonline comparison for the practical differences.

Who maintains DMPonline?

The Digital Curation Centre (DCC), a UK-based organisation, which hosts and operates DMPonline as its instance of the DMPRoadmap platform.

References

Digital Curation Centre, DMPonline (dmponline.dcc.ac.uk) and DCC service pages (dcc.ac.uk/dmponline).

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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  "dateModified": "2026-08-17T01:56:38",
  "inLanguage": "en"
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DMPonline (DCC product)