DMPonline, DMPTool and Argos are the three leading platforms for writing a data management plan (DMP): DMPonline (Digital Curation Centre, UK) and DMPTool (California Digital Library, US) share the same open-source DMP Roadmap codebase, while Argos (OpenAIRE) is built for machine-actionable, European open-science workflows. The right choice depends on your funder’s templates, whether your institution offers a branded instance, and whether you need structured API export.
A data management plan tool is software that walks a researcher through funder- and institution-specific questions, stores the resulting answers as a structured document, and — increasingly — exports that document in a machine-readable format rather than as static prose. DMPonline is the Digital Curation Centre’s web-based DMP-writing service, built on the open-source DMP Roadmap platform it co-develops with the California Digital Library. This guide compares it against DMPTool and Argos on the three factors that actually decide adoption: funder-template coverage, institutional branding, and API export.
- What is DMPonline, and who runs it?
- DMPonline vs DMPTool: same codebase, different communities
- What is Argos, and how does it differ?
- Funder-template coverage: which tool fits your funder
- Institutional branding and API export compared
- Common questions about choosing a DMP tool
- Choosing a tool: what the decision actually hinges on
What is DMPonline, and who runs it?
DMPonline is a free web application, developed and hosted by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), based at the University of Edinburgh. It supports researchers in producing a data management plan against a specific funder or institutional template, with embedded guidance text at each question. It is the standard reference tool for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grant-holders and is widely adopted across UK and European universities.
Many institutions run their own branded instance rather than sending researchers to the generic service — the University of Manchester, University of Sheffield, University of Plymouth and University of Exeter all operate dedicated DMPonline subdomains with local templates and guidance layered on top of the shared DCC platform.
DMPonline vs DMPTool: same codebase, different communities
DMPonline and DMPTool are not separate products built by rival teams — they run on the same open-source codebase, DMP Roadmap, jointly developed by the DCC and the California Digital Library (CDL). The practical difference is community and funder coverage, not underlying functionality.
DMPTool, operated by the CDL (part of the University of California system), is the default choice for US-based researchers, carrying templates for agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). DMPonline carries the equivalent depth for UK and European funders, including UKRI’s constituent research councils and Wellcome Trust. Because both draw on the same codebase, a plan exported from either tool follows a broadly comparable data model — the divergence sits in which templates, guidance text and institutional branding are pre-loaded, not in the software itself.
What is Argos, and how does it differ?
Argos is a DMP-writing platform developed within OpenAIRE, the European open-science infrastructure, rather than from the DMP Roadmap lineage. Argos was designed from the outset around machine-actionable output, producing plans as structured objects intended to connect into the wider European research-information graph rather than sit as a standalone PDF.
Its templates lean towards Horizon Europe and European Research Council (ERC) requirements, and its architecture emphasises linking a DMP’s contents — datasets, repositories, funders, organisations — to persistent identifiers already circulating in the OpenAIRE Research Graph. For a European-funded project embedded in that ecosystem, this integration is a genuine functional difference, not just a branding one.
Funder-template coverage: which tool fits your funder
Template coverage is usually the deciding factor, since a funder-specific template determines exactly which questions a plan must answer. The table below summarises where each platform’s template strength lies.
| Platform | Steward | Strongest funder coverage | Typical user base |
|---|---|---|---|
| DMPonline | Digital Curation Centre | UKRI councils, Wellcome Trust, UK institutional templates | UK and European universities |
| DMPTool | California Digital Library | NSF, NIH, US federal agency templates | US universities and research institutes |
| Argos | OpenAIRE | Horizon Europe, ERC, EOSC-aligned funders | European open-science projects |
None of the three restricts researchers to their “home” funder templates — DMPonline hosts non-UK institutional templates, and DMPTool lists non-US funders too — but the depth of guidance and the freshness of template maintenance concentrate where each tool’s steward organisation has direct funder relationships.
Institutional branding and API export compared
Beyond templates, two practical factors distinguish the tools for an institution deciding which one to adopt.
- Institutional branding. Both DMPonline and DMPTool support institution-specific branded sub-sites — a university can present its own logo, guidance text and curated template list under its own subdomain while the underlying platform remains centrally maintained. Argos, built for the OpenAIRE/EOSC ecosystem, is more typically deployed as a shared service with organisation profiles rather than fully white-labelled institutional instances.
- API and machine-actionable export. All three platforms are converging on the RDA DMP Common Standard, developed by the Research Data Alliance’s working group on machine-actionable DMPs, which defines a shared JSON structure for exporting plan content. This is what allows a plan written in one tool to be read, in principle, by a funder system, a repository, or a research-information system rather than only by a human reader.
For research administrators evaluating tools as part of broader research administration workflows, the practical question is less “which tool is best” and more “which tool’s export format and branding options integrate with our existing repository, CRIS and grants-management systems”.
Common questions about choosing a DMP tool
Do I need a data management plan?
Most major funders — including UKRI, Wellcome Trust, the NSF, the NIH and Horizon Europe — require a data management plan as a condition of funding. If your grant application names one of these funders, you need a DMP, and using DMPonline, DMPTool or Argos is the fastest route to a compliant one.
How do I write a data management plan?
Writing a DMP means working through a funder-specific template — covering what data you will create, how it will be documented, where it will be stored, and how it will be shared or preserved. DMPonline, DMPTool and Argos each provide the relevant template with embedded guidance, rather than requiring you to draft one from a blank page.
What is included in a data management plan?
A DMP typically covers the types of data to be produced, the metadata and documentation standards used, access and sharing policies, and the plan for long-term archiving and preservation. Machine-actionable tools structure these elements so they can be exported and reused by other systems, not just read once.
Choosing a tool: what the decision actually hinges on
Because DMPonline, DMPTool and Argos are all converging on the same RDA DMP Common Standard for export, the choice between them is rarely a compatibility question. It comes down to fit: which platform already carries deep templates for your funder, whether your institution operates a branded instance you are expected to use, and whether your downstream systems consume RDA-conformant JSON export.
For a UK or European researcher working with UKRI or Wellcome funding, DMPonline is the default starting point. For a US researcher working with NSF or NIH funding, DMPTool serves the equivalent role. For a Horizon Europe or ERC-funded project deeply embedded in the EOSC ecosystem, Argos’s machine-actionability and graph integration make it the stronger fit. As the RDA Common Standard matures further, expect the practical differences between the three to narrow to templates and branding alone, with export interoperability becoming a solved problem rather than a selection criterion.
