Research Data Management

All data management plans that are part of resarch grant proposals should be reviewed by Christina Chan-Park and Billie Peterson-Lugo.  Please send us an email with your 1-2 page plan, the abstract to your grant, and the methods section of your proposal at least 7 business days before you plan to submit your grant application.

The DMPTool, developed and maintained by the California Digital Library, helps you develop your data management plan. The site includes sample data management plans and templates for many of the major funders.  In the future, Billie and Christina will be able to see your data management plan directly in the tool.

1. Go to the DMPTool
2. Click on "Get Started" link
3. Click on the "Your Institution" bar
4. Start typing "Baylor University", select that option when it appears, and click the "Go" button
5. Login with your BearID and password, using Duo, if necessary
6. Click on the "Create plan" button
7. Provide the basic information about your research, use the "Select the primary funding organization" option to select an appropriate funding agency (if applicable); otherwise check the "No funder associated with this plan or my funder is not listed" box
8. If "Which DMP template would you like to use?" select a template that best fits your research proposal
9. Click the "Create plan" button

On the next display, you will see several tabs:

• Project Details -- Provides the information from the previous screen and also allows you to obtain guidance provided by other universities (if desired) regarding the DMP for the agency you have selected. 
• Plan Overview -- Provides a broad description of what is expected in a DMP by the agency you have selected.
• Write Plan -- Provides the questions to be answered in the DMP for the agency you have selected; note the guidance options provided to the right of the text box.
• Share -- Set plan visibility parameters ("private"; "organization"; "public") and/or share your plan with collaborators or with Christina Chan-Park and Billie Peterson-Lugo for review.
• Download -- Download your finalized plan for inclusion in your final proposal.

Personnel in the Baylor Libraries are working with the Texas Digital Library to use the Texas Data Repository (TDR) to hold data produced by Baylor researchers.  Baylor's data repository in TDR is called BEARdata.  The TDR will allow researchers to deposit all the data from their projects in one place in an organized structure, with descriptive information, and to control access to these data.  One can also include links to data deposited on other sites and papers that reference the data.  Data can be made free to the public, non-accessible, automatically accessibly after agreeing to certain terms, or only accessible with the researchers' permission.  Metadata (descriptive information) about projects and datasets are searchable on the internet.

Information about the TDR you might want to include in your DMP.

To ensure that the data will be discoverable by the larger research community, data will be curated in the Texas Data Repository (http://data.tdl.org/) through the Texas Digital Library.  The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a consortium of academic libraries in Texas with a proven history of providing shared technology services that support secure, reliable access to digital collections of research and scholarship. The Texas Data Repository is a project of the TDL and its members to develop a statewide consortia research data repository for researchers at Texas institutions of higher learning. Data will be curated in the repository following accepted standards.  Data in the TDR are assigned DOIs, which enables the citing of data by anyone who uses it. Metadata for the project data will provide information on subject, provenance, authorship, methods and post-processing, and copyright that will support discoverability, curation, and preservation of the collection, as well as accessibility via harvesting and APIs.

For your particular project, there might be a discipline repository that is more appropriate (or required) for the deposit of your data.  You can always have a link to these data from your project data collection in TDR.  To search for other possible repositories use:

In addition to TDR, there are other general repositories where you can deposit data

You should enumerate each of your research methods and the data that is generated. You should also mention which portion of your data you plan to archive.

Metadata is descriptive information about your data -- it both makes your data discoverable and informs other researchers about your data.  You should give a rough the number of files and the sizes that you plan to archive so that it can be determined whether special servers or procedures are required.  You should mention the file formats that will be preserved and that you have a folder and file naming convention.

You should mention the type of information you plan to include in your readme files and/or catalogs of your data.

You can also include publications (articles and/or theses) as data that you can deposit.  Baylor theses and dissertations are automatically deposited in BEARdocs.  You can also deposit pre-prints or post-prints (depending on your publisher agreement) in BEARdocs.

You should mention the possible subject or general repositories where you might deposit your data.  Remember you can always use the Texas Data Repository.  If possible, include a statement on how that repository will maintain your data. 

You should mention your timeline for depositing and the minimum time that the data will be maintained.  Also mention if you believe there will be extenuating circumstances (patents, privacy, etc.) that will delay the deposit of the data.  You can use a statement like

The data will be deposited within [3 months, 6 months, 1 year] after the completion of the project [or the publication of papers whichever is later] for a period of at least [3 years, 5 years, 10 years].

You should mention which portion of your data will be deposited.  You also need to mention whether the data is open to anyone or whether permission is required to access the data.  Some of your data can be open access (i.e. catalogs, aggregated data) while other parts can be restricted (i.e. disaggregated data).

You should also mention where and how will people find out about the data.  Most repositories are discoverable by standard internet search engines, but you might also include links on your website or citations in your articles.

You should mention if you have any restrictions on who can download or use the data and on how the data can be reused. 

You might be interested in putting a license on your data (technically data (the information) does not fall under copyright but formatted data (specifically formatted tables, graphs, etc.) does).  Check out creative commons licensing for different types of licensing options.