CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: nsf data management plan

  • NSF Data Management Plan: A Directorate Guide

    An NSF data management plan (DMP) is a required proposal component describing how a project will handle, share, and preserve research data — and since 27 April 2026, its exact content is set by a structured Research.gov webform that adapts to the proposal’s lead directorate, meaning BIO, ENG, GEO, MPS, OPP, SBE, and EDU proposals no longer follow one identical template. Treating NSF as a single monolithic funder — the default approach in most DMP guides — now produces plans that miss directorate-specific expectations.

    A data management and sharing plan (DMSP) is the National Science Foundation’s formal proposal document setting out how a funded project will manage, share, and archive the data, samples, and other research products it produces. Under the Proposal & Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) section II.D.2(ii) and Policy Notice NSF 26-202, every full proposal must include one — or a documented justification if the project will not generate data.

    What Does an NSF Data Management Plan Require in 2026?

    Every NSF proposal must address six general elements under PAPPG II.D.2(ii), regardless of directorate. These form the baseline that directorate-specific guidance then narrows or extends.

    • The types of data, samples, physical collections, software, and curriculum materials the project will produce
    • The standards used for data and metadata format and content, with a documented workaround where no standard exists
    • Policies for data access and sharing, including privacy, confidentiality, security, and intellectual-property protections
    • Policies for data reuse, redistribution, and the production of derivative products
    • Plans for archiving data and other research products and preserving long-term access to them

    Under Policy Notice NSF 26-202, a proposal that will not generate data does not need a full plan — a short justification statement satisfies the requirement instead.

    How Do NSF DMP Requirements Differ by Directorate?

    NSF publishes supplementary DMP guidance for seven directorates and offices — BIO, ENG, GEO, MPS, OPP, SBE, and EDU — plus at least one program-specific supplement (DMREF, under MPS). Where a directorate has issued no supplement, the general PAPPG rules apply by default. The table below summarises what each adds on top of the baseline.

    Directorate/Office Distinguishing emphasis
    Biological Sciences (BIO) Deposit in community-recognized public repositories (e.g. GenBank-class databases) with persistent identifiers linking data to publications
    Engineering (ENG) Broad coverage of software, models, and physical collections; attention to intellectual property where research has commercial potential
    Geosciences (GEO) Discipline-specific repository requirements — Ocean Sciences awardees, for example, are directed to the Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
    Mathematical & Physical Sciences (MPS) General guidance, plus a dedicated program-level supplement for the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) programme
    Office of Polar Programs (OPP) Governed by a separate Dear Colleague Letter establishing a distinct data and code/sample management policy rather than the standard DMSP framework alone
    Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE) Heavy emphasis on human-subjects protections — anonymisation, handling of personally identifiable information, informed consent for data sharing, and deposit in recognised social-science archives
    STEM Education (EDU) Maintains its own directorate-level data-management-plans page addressing education-research data and human-subjects considerations

    This directorate layering is why a plan drafted for a BIO proposal will read very differently from one drafted for an SBE or OPP proposal, even though both start from the same PAPPG baseline.

    What Changed With the April 2026 Research.gov Webform?

    Effective 27 April 2026, NSF replaced the free-standing two-page PDF data management and sharing plan with a structured webform submitted directly through Research.gov. This is the single most consequential change to NSF DMP practice since the policy’s creation, and it makes most “download the template” search results obsolete.

    • The plan is now entered field-by-field in Research.gov rather than uploaded as a standalone PDF attachment
    • The webform adapts its prompts to the proposal’s selected lead directorate, formalising the differences long implied but not enforced by the old PDF format
    • Investigators should verify current guidance for their directorate before assuming a saved PDF template from a prior submission still matches the required fields

    Institutional research offices that maintain locally cached “NSF DMP template” documents should retire the PDF version and point investigators to the live Research.gov webform for the current submission year.

    NSF Data Management Plan Checklist, by Directorate

    Use this sequence to build a directorate-appropriate plan rather than a generic one:

    • Confirm the proposal’s lead directorate and pull its specific guidance page (BIO, ENG, GEO, MPS, OPP, SBE, or EDU) alongside the general PAPPG II.D.2(ii) requirements
    • List every data type, sample, and software product the project will generate
    • Identify the metadata standard and, for BIO or GEO proposals, the target public repository (e.g. BCO-DMO for ocean sciences)
    • For SBE or human-subjects work, document anonymisation, consent, and PII-handling procedures explicitly
    • For OPP proposals, check whether the relevant Dear Colleague Letter policy supersedes the standard DMSP structure
    • Set an archiving and long-term preservation plan with a named repository or institutional data service
    • Submit through the Research.gov webform rather than attaching a standalone PDF

    Common Questions About NSF Data Management Plans

    Does NSF require a data management plan?

    Yes. NSF requires a data management and sharing plan as a mandatory component of every full proposal, per PAPPG II.D.2(ii). Proposals that will not produce data must instead include a written justification explaining why no plan is needed.

    What is included in a data management plan?

    A complete plan covers the types of data produced, the metadata standards applied, access and sharing policies, provisions for reuse and derivatives, and an archiving and preservation plan for long-term accessibility.

    Do I need a data management plan?

    Any NSF full proposal needs one unless the project genuinely generates no data, samples, or research products — in which case a short justification statement, not a full plan, satisfies the requirement under Policy Notice NSF 26-202.

    What This Means for Research Administrators

    Directorate-tailored webforms shift the compliance burden earlier in the proposal cycle. Research offices that previously offered a single boilerplate DMP template now need directorate-aware review checkpoints, because a plan that satisfies BIO’s repository expectations will not automatically satisfy SBE’s human-subjects requirements or OPP’s separate policy letter. Institutions supporting multi-directorate portfolios should update internal guidance documents to reference the correct directorate page rather than a single generic NSF DMP resource.

    The Outlook for NSF Data Management Requirements

    The move to a structured, directorate-tailored webform signals that NSF intends to enforce, rather than merely suggest, discipline-specific data practices. Investigators and research offices that continue treating the NSF data management plan as a single generic two-pager risk submitting plans that technically comply with PAPPG but miss the sharper, directorate-specific expectations now built into the submission system itself.

  • DCC Data Management Plan Tool vs US Options

    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?

    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.