DMPonline, run by the UK’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC), is the de facto standard tool for producing a DCC data management plan at British institutions, built around UK funder templates and institutional branding; US-centric platforms such as DMPTool cover the same workflow but are tuned to NSF and NIH requirements instead. For a UK institution choosing between them, the decision turns on three factors: funder template coverage, institutional customisation, and export format compatibility.
A data management plan (DMP) is a formal document, typically required at the grant-application stage, that describes how research data will be collected, documented, stored, shared and preserved throughout and after a project.
Contents
- What is DMPonline and who maintains it?
- How does DMPonline compare with US-based DMP tools like DMPTool?
- Which funder templates do UK and US platforms cover?
- How do institutional branding and export formats differ?
- Which platform should a UK institution choose?
- Common questions about data management plan tools
- What this means for research administrators
- The outlook for DMP tooling in UK institutions
What is DMPonline and who maintains it?
DMPonline is a free, web-based tool that helps researchers create, review and share data management plans that meet institutional and funder requirements. It is provided by the Digital Curation Centre, a UK-wide body hosted by the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bath that has produced data curation guidance since 2004.
DCC’s own resource pages describe DMPonline as “a flexible web-based tool to assist users to create personalised plans according to their context or research funder,” supplemented by a published checklist and funder-requirements summary that institutions reuse in local guidance. This positions DMPonline less as a generic form-filler and more as a curated gateway into UK research data policy.
How does DMPonline compare with US-based DMP tools like DMPTool?
The principal US equivalent is DMPTool, operated by the California Digital Library’s University of California Curation Center (UC3). Functionally, the two platforms are close cousins: DMPonline and DMPTool both run on the open-source DMP Roadmap codebase, a joint DCC/California Digital Library development effort, which is why their editing interfaces and template logic look similar.
The divergence is in orientation. DMPTool’s own platform messaging emphasises “machine-actionable data management and sharing plans (DMSPs)” and a mechanism for registering a persistent DMP ID for each plan — a feature aimed squarely at US funder and repository integration. DMPonline instead foregrounds UK and European funder templates and DCC-authored guidance, with less emphasis on identifier registration.
- Governance: DMPonline is DCC-run (UK); DMPTool is UC3/California Digital Library-run (US), though both share development history.
- Primary audience: DMPonline serves UK and European researchers; DMPTool serves US researchers, chiefly those funded by NSF or NIH.
- Identifier support: DMPTool actively promotes DMP ID registration for machine-actionable plans; DMPonline’s strength is curated funder-specific question sets.
Which funder templates do UK and US platforms cover?
Funder template coverage is where the two ecosystems diverge most sharply, because UK and US funders impose structurally different DMP requirements.
DCC’s published summary of UK funder expectations shows the requirement is not uniform across UKRI’s research councils: NERC mandates a single-page Outline Data Management Plan for all grant and fellowship applications; ESRC requires a data management and sharing plan as an integral part of every application; MRC requires a plan at proposal stage using its own template; BBSRC requires a data-sharing plan covering formats, standards and release timeframes; and EPSRC, by contrast, does not require a formal DMP at all, expecting only that data be preserved and shared. The Wellcome Trust asks for a data-sharing plan addressing seven set questions, and STFC recommends eight. DMPonline builds each of these directly into its template library.
US coverage runs the other way. Under NSF policy, proposals submitted on or after 18 January 2011 must include a supplementary Data Management Plan document of no more than two pages. NIH’s Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy became effective on 25 January 2023, requiring an approved DMS plan for most funded research. DMPTool’s own release notes confirm ongoing template maintenance for both — recent updates added NSF templates mirroring the Research.gov webform and an updated NIH DMS plan template.
| Factor | DMPonline (DCC, UK) | DMPTool (UC3, US) |
|---|---|---|
| Primary funder templates | UKRI councils (AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC), Wellcome Trust, CRUK, British Heart Foundation, Horizon Europe | NSF, NIH, plus other US federal agencies |
| Governing body | Digital Curation Centre (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath) | California Digital Library / UC3 |
| Codebase | DMP Roadmap (shared) | DMP Roadmap (shared) |
| Distinct feature | DCC-curated guidance and checklist embedded per question | DMP ID registration for machine-actionable plans |
| Cost model | Free to use; DCC-funded | Free, community-supported by participating organisations |
How do institutional branding and export formats differ?
Both platforms let subscribing institutions layer their own guidance on top of funder templates, but UK adoption of this feature is unusually deep. The Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Durham and York all direct researchers to institution-branded DMPonline instances with local examples, contacts and policy links rather than the generic DCC template alone.
DMPTool offers equivalent institutional customisation and maintains a public directory of participating organisations, but its branding layer is oriented around US library and research-office workflows.
On export formats, both tools produce human-readable plans (typically PDF or Word) for attachment to a grant application, and both are built to support machine-actionable outputs aligned with the Research Data Alliance’s DMP Common Standard — a specification the DCC helped develop through its long-standing role in RDA’s DMP Common Standards working group. DMPTool goes a step further operationally by issuing a registrable DMP ID per plan, which is not a standard DMPonline feature.
Which platform should a UK institution choose?
For a UK institution, DMPonline is the practical default because its template library already maps to UKRI council requirements, Wellcome, CRUK and Horizon Europe — the funders a UK-based researcher is actually likely to encounter. Choosing a US-centric tool instead would mean losing that pre-built mapping and manually adapting NSF- or NIH-oriented question sets to UK funder wording.
The exception is genuinely transatlantic collaboration: a UK institution with US co-investigators or US sub-awards may need both platforms in parallel — DMPonline for the UK funder-facing plan, DMPTool where a US partner’s DMP ID or NSF/NIH template is contractually required.
Common questions about data management plan tools
What are examples of data management tools?
The main dedicated DMP tools are DMPonline (Digital Curation Centre, UK-focused) and DMPTool (California Digital Library, US-focused), both built on the shared DMP Roadmap codebase. Institutions also use repository platforms, electronic lab notebooks and metadata catalogues as complementary data-management infrastructure alongside a dedicated DMP editor.
What should a data management plan include?
A UK-funder-conformant data management plan typically covers what data will be created, how it will be documented and stored, data security and ethical considerations, intellectual property, and the timeline and method for sharing or preserving the dataset after the project ends. Exact sections vary by funder template.
What are DMP tools?
DMP tools are web-based platforms that guide researchers through funder-specific question sets to produce a compliant data management plan, then export it as a document or machine-actionable record. DMPonline and DMPTool are the two most widely adopted examples, each aligned to a different national funder landscape.
What this means for research administrators
Research offices supporting grant applications should treat platform choice as a compliance decision, not a preference. Using DMPonline’s UKRI-mapped templates reduces the risk of a plan being rejected for missing council-specific requirements, since NERC, ESRC and MRC each specify distinct mandatory content.
Institutions with international grant portfolios should budget administrative time for maintaining both a DMPonline and a DMPTool account, rather than assuming one platform can serve every funder relationship a research-active department holds.
The outlook for DMP tooling in UK institutions
DMPonline’s advantage for UK institutions is structural, not cosmetic: it is built around the funder landscape UK researchers actually face, from NERC’s single-page mandate to Wellcome’s seven-question format. US-centric tools remain the right choice for US-funded work, and the shared DMP Roadmap codebase means the two ecosystems are likely to keep converging on machine-actionable export standards even as their funder template libraries stay nationally distinct. For UK research administration teams, the practical rule is simple: default to DMPonline for UK and European funders, and add DMPTool only where a specific US funder or collaborator requires it.
