CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ukri 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.