Data management plans

A data management plan documents the lifecycle of your data. It explains how you'll collect, store, access, and share you data so other researchers can reproduce your results.

Why you need a data management plan

A good data management plan makes your research results available and accessible after your project is complete and you've published the results. This makes your research more valuable and easier to reproduce.

What your data management plan should include

Your data management plan should explain:

What type of data will be produced
How your data will be organized
What standards you'll use for documentation and metadata
What steps you'll take to protect privacy, security, confidentiality, intellectual property or other rights
How, where, and when your data will be accessed and shared by others
Where you'll archive and preserve your data and for how long
Who's responsible for each part of your data management plan (either in each relevant section or in a separate roles and responsibilities section)

See the University Consortium for Political and Social Research's data management plan framework for more detailed tips.

Create your plan with DMPtool

DMPTool helps you create data management plans that meet funder guidelines. In this tool, you can:

Submit your plan for review by library staff
Find templates for federal and private funders, including NSF, NIH, USDA, and more
Export your plan into Microsoft Word or PDF formats
Create test plans with funder-specific and generic templates

Learn more about how to use DMPtool.

Sign in to DMPTool with your University of Arizona email to get started.

Data management plan examples

These vetted DMPs from successful proposals were provided by UA researchers. Please do not copy text from these DMPs verbatim into your own DMP. Use your NetID to view.

Title	Funder	Date	Courtesy of
Clinical data example (after selecting the link, choose the "Data Management and Sharing Plans" drop down menu from the resulting page)	NIH National Institutes of Health (2023 DMSP)	2023	Bonnie LaFleur
Using natural language processing to determine predictors of healthy diet and physical activity behavior change in ovarian cancer survivors (Dataworks! DMP Challenge Winner)	NIH National Institutes of Health (2023 DMSP)	2022	UA researcher
Area of research: Food security and agriculture	NSF Social and Economic Sciences (SES)	2017	UA researcher
Accelerating Comparative Metagenomics Through an Ocean Cloud Commons	NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE)	2016	Bonnie Hurwitz
Synthesis and Design Workshop Principles for the Equitable Design of Digitally-Distributed, Studio-Based STEM Learning Environments	NSF Education and Human Resources (EHR)	2018	Leslie Sult
Nutrient Bioavailability--Phytonutrients and Beyond	USDA NIFA	2018	Frank Duca
Area of Research: Insect resistance to pesticides	USDA NIFA	2019	UA researcher
OSIRIS-REx Science Data Management Plan (no login required). See the OSIRIS-REx Mission Bundle page for citation information.	NASA	2016	Dante Lauretta

General NSF examples

Pannell J (2016) Data Management Plan for PhD Thesis "Climatic Limitation of Alien Weeds in New Zealand: Enhancing Species Distribution Models with Field Data". Research Ideas and Outcomes 2: e8664. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.2.e8664 (created using NSF template in DMPTool)
NSF General: Rio Grande example (Zenodo)
NSF: Physical Sciences and Engineering, Biosciences, Social & Behavioral Sciences (courtesy of the Rice University Faculty Senate's Research Committee)
NSF: Examples from different NSF Directorates (University of California, San Diego)
NSF: General example (courtesy of Kenneth Hayes, University of Hawai’i, 2011)

Biological Sciences examples

NSF: Division of Biological Infrastructure example (courtesy of Thomas Ranker, University of Hawai'i, 2011)

Engineering examples

NSF ENG: positive and negative examples (University of Michigan)

Geosciences examples

NSF: Division of Ocean Sciences example (courtesy of Craig Smith, University of Hawai'i, 2012)

Sample plans (not to be used as templates)
Sample Genomic Data Sharing Plan template (Stanford University)
Model Data Sharing Plan for Human Genomic Data (University of Pittsburgh, alternative link)

Collection of Natural Science examples (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR))
Sample Data Management Plan for Depositing Data with ICPSR
Lakeshore Nature Preserve example (University of Wisconsin-Madison, DMP - Environmental Biology)
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Digital Humanities provides sample applications which include Data Management Plans for their Digital Humanities Advancement grants program (PDF).
- For example, the Data Management Plan for the successful application Temple University, Developing the Data Set of Nineteenth-Century Knowledge is included in page 17 of the Appendix in the PDF linked above.