The Elements of the Data Management Plan: A Gap Analysis and Recommendations

Many federal funding agencies, including NIH and most recently NSF, are requiring that grant applications contain data management plans for projects involving data collection. To support researchers in meeting this requirement, ICPSR is providing guidance on creating such plans. ICPSR published a list of elements for creating a data management plan. To determine the list of elements, ICPSR conducted a gap analysis of existing recommendations for data management plans and other forms of guidance made available for researchers generating data. The result of the gap analysis was a comparison of existing forms of guidance around the world. Findings from the gap analysis will be discussed in this presentation.