CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: MRC data management plan

  • MRC Data Management Plan vs Wellcome Rules for Bioscience Grantees

    An MRC data management plan (DMP) sets out how researchers will collect, document, store, secure and share data on an MRC-funded project, using UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) official template. Wellcome instead requires a broader “outputs management plan” covering data, software and physical materials, with no fixed template. Both are due at application stage, but their scope, sharing timelines and repository rules differ in ways that matter for bioscience grantees.

    A data management plan is a funder-mandated document that specifies how research data will be handled, from creation through to long-term preservation and reuse.

    What must an MRC data management plan include?

    The Medical Research Council (MRC), a UKRI council, requires all funding applicants to submit a DMP as part of their research proposal. Applicants must use UKRI’s official MRC data management plan template, an ODT document last revised on 1 April 2024 to align with the MRC’s revised data sharing policy.

    The template asks researchers to address:

    • Data types and volumes — what will be generated or reused, and in what formats.
    • Documentation and metadata — how the data will be made interpretable to other researchers.
    • Ethics and legal compliance — data protection, consent and confidentiality arrangements.
    • Storage, backup and security — arrangements during the life of the project.
    • Sharing and preservation — the named repository and any restrictions on access.
    • Trusted research and innovation (TRI) considerations — a requirement added in the April 2024 revision, reflecting UKRI-wide guidance on research security.

    The underlying MRC data sharing policy was itself revised on 29 November 2023 to reflect the commitments in the MRC’s Strategic Delivery Plan 2022 to 2025, incorporating a wider definition of “research data” and updated open access and data protection law. Reviewers assess DMPs against a published rubric, and MRC guidance states it expects valuable data to be shared with as few restrictions as possible.

    How does Wellcome’s outputs management plan differ?

    Wellcome does not ask for a “data management plan” in the MRC sense. Its Policy on Data, Software and Materials Management and Sharing — released on 10 July 2017, replacing an earlier Policy on Data Management and Sharing — requires an outputs management plan wherever a project will generate data, software or materials of clear value to others.

    Three features distinguish the Wellcome approach from MRC’s:

    • Broader scope — the plan must cover physical materials such as antibodies and cell lines, not only digital data and software.
    • No fixed template — applicants draft a plan “proportionate” to the scale and likely value of the outputs, rather than completing a standard form.
    • Living document — the plan is expected to be maintained and reviewed throughout the research lifecycle, not filed once at application stage.

    Wellcome frames its position as “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” — language that mirrors the European Commission’s Horizon Europe open-data principle — allowing restrictions to protect participant confidentiality or to enable intellectual property to be developed under its IP and patenting policy.

    MRC vs Wellcome: data-sharing requirements compared

    The table below summarises the structural differences a bioscience grantee applying to both funders needs to reconcile.

    Feature MRC Wellcome
    Plan name Data management plan (DMP) Outputs management plan
    Template Fixed UKRI ODT template (rev. April 2024) No template; proportionate free-text plan
    Scope Research data Data, software and physical materials
    Governing policy MRC data sharing policy (rev. Nov 2023) Policy on Data, Software and Materials Management and Sharing (2017)
    Review Assessed by peer reviewers against a published rubric Assessed as part of the wider proposal; monitored at end-of-grant reporting
    Extra checks Trusted research and innovation considerations required IP and patenting policy considerations required
    Repository expectation Discipline-specific repository, minimal restrictions Recognised community repository with persistent identifiers

    What are the sharing timelines and repository rules?

    Wellcome sets the more explicit timeline of the two funders. Its policy states that, as a minimum, data underpinning a research paper must be made available at the time of publication, along with any original software needed to view the dataset or replicate the analysis. For research related to public health emergencies, Wellcome requires quality-assured interim and final data to be shared “as rapidly and widely as possible”, ahead of journal publication.

    MRC’s policy is principles-based rather than date-bound: it asks applicants to share data “in a timely and responsible manner” with as few restrictions as possible, leaving the specific timeline to be justified case by case in the DMP itself.

    On repositories, both funders expect deposit in a recognised, discipline-appropriate service with persistent identifiers where possible. Wellcome additionally operates Wellcome Open Research, a publishing platform for rapid dissemination of funded results. On costs, both funders will fund justified data-sharing expenses within the grant; notably, in early 2018 Wellcome, the MRC, Cancer Research UK and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation jointly announced they would cover the costs of sharing clinical trials data via the Clinical Study Data Request (CSDR) platform — a rare example of aligned funder practice that removes cost as a barrier to compliance.

    Common questions about data management plans

    What is a data management plan?

    A data management plan (DMP) is a formal document describing how research data will be collected, documented, stored, secured and shared throughout and after a project. UK funders including MRC and Wellcome require a DMP, or an equivalent outputs plan, at application stage to demonstrate researchers have planned for responsible data stewardship and future reuse.

    How to write a data management plan?

    Writing a DMP means addressing data type and volume, documentation and metadata standards, ethical and legal compliance, storage and security arrangements, and a sharing and preservation route via a named repository. MRC applicants must use UKRI’s fixed template; Wellcome applicants draft a proportionate outputs management plan without a set format.

    What are the 5 steps to data management?

    Most funder templates cover five areas: data description, documentation and metadata, ethical and legal compliance, storage and security, and data sharing and preservation. MRC and Wellcome both map onto this structure, though Wellcome extends the final step to cover software and physical materials alongside data.

    What this means for UK bioscience grant applicants

    Researchers holding, or applying for, both MRC and Wellcome funding on related bioscience or clinical work cannot use a single generic DMP. The MRC’s fixed template and trusted-research-and-innovation checks demand a structured, form-based response; Wellcome’s proportionate outputs management plan demands editorial judgement about what counts as a “significant” output and how physical materials will be tracked alongside data.

    For institutional research administration teams, the practical implication is a checklist mismatch: MRC compliance is verified against a rubric at peer review, while Wellcome compliance is verified narratively at end-of-grant reporting. Multi-funder consortium grants — increasingly common in UK bioscience — should draft to the stricter of the two requirements (typically Wellcome’s publication-time data availability) and then map that single commitment back into each funder’s own plan format, rather than drafting two plans independently.

    As UKRI continues to harmonise data policy guidance across its seven councils, and as Wellcome’s outputs-based model gains attention from other biomedical funders, expect further convergence — but for now, grantees still need to satisfy two distinct documents, two distinct review processes, and two distinct definitions of what “data” even covers.

  • UKRI Data Management Plan Template Guide for Multi-Council Grants

    UKRI’s common data management plan template asks applicants to describe, section by section, how research data will be generated, documented, stored, shared and preserved — but the level of detail, word limit and submission requirement differ by council: MRC and BBSRC mandate a full plan, NERC requires only a one-page outline, and EPSRC does not require submission at all.

    A data management plan (DMP) is a structured document, submitted with or alongside a grant application, that specifies how research data will be collected, documented, stored, shared and preserved throughout and after a funded project. For UKRI-funded researchers, the practical difficulty is not knowing what a DMP is — it is knowing which version of the UKRI data management plan template applies to their council, how long it should be, and what each field is actually asking for. This walkthrough goes section by section across the four councils most research administrators handle together on multi-strand or interdisciplinary awards: MRC, BBSRC, NERC and EPSRC.

    What does UKRI’s common data management plan template cover?

    UKRI does not operate a single, mandatory template across all seven research councils. Instead, each council publishes its own guidance built around a common core of questions: what data will be produced, how it will be documented, where it will be stored, who can access it, and how long it will be retained. This shared structure is why researchers refer informally to a “UKRI data management plan template”, even though the actual document you complete depends on which council is funding the work.

    The starting point for most multi-council applicants is the MRC data management plan template, a Word document published via UKRI’s publications library, because several other councils’ library-hosted templates (including NC3Rs-badged studies) reuse its structure. NERC, BBSRC and EPSRC each layer council-specific expectations — word limits, submission timing, and retention periods — on top of that shared skeleton.

    How do requirements differ across MRC, BBSRC, NERC and EPSRC?

    The single biggest source of error in multi-council DMPs is applying one council’s rules to another council’s proposal. The table below sets out the four core differences research administrators need to check before drafting.

    Council DMP required at application? Template source Length Minimum data retention
    MRC Yes — mandatory for all funding proposals MRC Data Management Plan template (UKRI publications library) 500–1,500 words; 1,500 words for longitudinal studies, population cohorts, genetic, omics, imaging data and biobanks 10 years (20 years for population health and clinical studies)
    BBSRC Yes — mandatory for grant applications BBSRC template via DMPOnline (Digital Curation Centre) Maximum 500 words (check individual grant-stream variation) 10 years after project completion
    NERC Yes — one-page outline at application; full plan later NERC Outline Data Management Plan template and guidance (UKRI publications library) One page at application; full plan agreed with the relevant NERC data centre within 3–6 months of award start 10 years minimum
    EPSRC No — not submitted with the application No dedicated EPSRC council template; DMPOnline hosts an EPSRC-structured version for internal use No fixed limit — proportionate to the project 10 years from the end of any privileged-access period

    EPSRC is the outlier: it does not require a DMP to be submitted with the proposal, but most host institutions’ own research data policies still require one to exist internally so costs and storage needs are planned accurately. STFC sits closer to MRC and BBSRC — a DMP is mandatory for most schemes and capped at two sides of A4 — but, unlike MRC, STFC does not prescribe a fixed template.

    Completing the template field by field

    Across MRC, BBSRC, NERC and EPSRC guidance, the same seven fields recur, even where wording and word allowances differ. Address each one in this order.

    • Data collection and generation. State the type of data (quantitative, qualitative, imaging, genomic, environmental sensor data, software), the format, the estimated volume, and whether it is newly generated or reused from an existing source.
    • Documentation and metadata. Name the metadata standard you will apply and describe accompanying documentation — a data dictionary, README file or laboratory notebook — needed for another researcher to interpret the dataset without you.
    • Ethics, consent and legal basis. Cover informed consent, anonymisation or pseudonymisation methods, and who holds intellectual property rights, particularly for MRC-funded clinical or population studies, where this field is scrutinised most closely.
    • Storage and security during the project. Specify where data will sit while the grant is active, backup frequency, and access controls — this is where EPSRC-funded teams should still document internal practice even though nothing is submitted to the council.
    • Long-term preservation. Name the repository (an institutional archive, a NERC environmental data centre, or the UK Data Service for ESRC-adjacent social science data) and confirm the retention period matches your council’s minimum from the table above.
    • Data sharing and access conditions. State which datasets will be shared openly, any embargo or proprietary period, and the justification if some data cannot be shared — commercial sensitivity, participant privacy or national security are the standard justifications UKRI accepts.
    • Responsibilities and resourcing. Name who owns data management delivery after the grant ends and itemise any storage, curation or specialist-staff costs, which can — and should — be included in the full economic cost of the proposal.

    For MRC and NERC applications specifically, the plan text is typically copied directly into the Je-S or funding-service application form rather than uploaded as a separate attachment — check the individual call documentation, since attachment rules vary by scheme and change between funding rounds.

    Common questions about the UKRI data management plan

    How do you write a data management plan?

    Start from your funding council’s specific template rather than a generic one, then work through data collection, documentation, storage, sharing and retention in turn. Keep language concrete and proportionate to your project’s data volume, and justify any decision not to share data rather than leaving it unexplained.

    What is included in a data management plan?

    A complete plan covers the types of data produced, the metadata and documentation standards used, storage and security arrangements, the repository chosen for preservation, access and sharing conditions, and the retention period. UKRI councils also expect a statement of who is responsible for delivery and what resources this requires.

    Do you need a data management plan for a UKRI grant?

    It depends on the council. MRC, BBSRC, NERC and STFC require a DMP to be submitted with most funding proposals, while EPSRC does not require submission, and AHRC has no general DMP requirement at all. Always confirm the specific call documentation, since requirements can vary by scheme within a single council.

    What does a good data management plan look like?

    A strong plan is specific to the project rather than generic, stays within the council’s stated word or page limit, and answers every field with a concrete detail — a named repository, a defined retention period, a stated metadata standard — instead of a vague intention. Reviewers assess it alongside the rest of the proposal during peer review.

    What this means for multi-council applicants

    Institutions running interdisciplinary programmes — a BBSRC-MRC joint call, or a NERC-EPSRC environmental engineering award — cannot draft one DMP and submit it unchanged to both funders. Word limits alone range from 500 words (BBSRC) to 1,500 words (MRC’s most data-intensive study types), and only NERC requires a two-stage outline-then-full-plan process. Research administration teams supporting these awards should build a field-by-field checklist per council into their proposal workflow, rather than relying on a single house template.

    As UKRI continues to consolidate open-research expectations across its councils, researchers should expect incremental convergence on shared metadata and repository standards — but not, in the near term, a single mandatory cross-council template. Until that happens, matching the right template to the right council, at the right length, remains the determining factor in a compliant submission.

    For teams coordinating research administration workflows across funders and councils, see CASRAI’s research administration resources, and consult the CASRAI Dictionary for definitions of related research data terminology.