Funder Mandates

NSF Data Management Plan Requirement

The NSF requires all grant proposals to include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled “Data Management Plan”. This supplementary document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results.

To assist investigators, the National Science Foundation is providing FAQs and guidance documents from specific Directorates that address compliance. The entire policy, FAQ list, and links to Directorate information are available at http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/dmp.jsp. For full policy implementation, see the Grant Proposal Guide Chapter II.C.2.j.

NIH Data Data Sharing Policy

The National Institutes of Health data sharing policy requires investigators submitting a research application requesting $500,000 or more of direct costs in any single year to NIH on or after October 1, 2003 are expected to include a plan for sharing final research data for research purposes, or state why data sharing is not possible.

The National Institutes of Health has made available several resources for investigators who must submit a data management plan, including an FAQ and a collection of helpful resources at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing/.

NEH Data Management Plan Requirement

Similar to the NSF, the National Endowment for the Humanities now requires a two-page (maximum) data management plan from all grant applicants that must address two questions:

What data are generated by your research?
What is your plan for managing the data?

The complete guidelines for submitting an NEH DMP can be found at the NEH Grant Guidelines page.

Several federal and non-governmental funding agencies have their own set of requirements for data sharing. See for example, the University of Minnesota's list of funding agency data guidelines.

Last Edited: 4 December 2012