A data management plan (DMP) contains all the information related to managing the data for your project: what data, stored where by whom, how it is looked after and when it is made public.
Planning how you are going to look after your data during your research, share it with your collaborators, and how you're going to preserve it after the project will save you time and money during and after your project.
Data Management Planning (UK Data Service)
Points you to key matters to consider in a data management and sharing plan.
Data Management Plans (MANTRA)
Take a short online course on data management planning here.
Guidelines for Effective Data Management Plans (ICPSR)
A set of guidelines, resources and sample plan by ICPSR.
DMP Tool is an online tool for building data management plan. You will need to create an account on the site to use the step-by-step guide.
You can also refer to the DMP Checklist that is created by the Digital Curation Centre.
| OneDrive for Business | OneDrive for Business is a cloud-based file storage system, giving you a 1TB of storage to share documents with anyone, with online editing and collaboration tools for Microsoft Office documents. |
| nBox | nBox is an online storage space for NUS staff to securely access and share data any time, any place and from any device. |
Source: NUS IT
It is stated in the NUS Research Data Management Policy that "Data should be stored at NUS in a way that permits a complete retrospective audit if necessary. Unless ethical, professional or funding body guidance requires otherwise, research results should be archived in a durable form that is, as far as possible, immune to subsequent alteration for a minimum period of 10 years."
For other relevant NUS policies and guidelines involving data management, please refer to this page.
Data Organization/Filing
When you start your project, you should think carefully about the filing system that you use so that information is easy to find later. A little forethought now will reduce the post-project transformations required for preservation.
Data Storage and Security
Your data are the life blood of your research. If you lose your data, recovery could be slow, costly or worse, it could be impossible. Therefore, through the course of your research you must ensure that all your research data, regardless of format, are stored securely, backed up and maintained regularly.
Documentation
When you start your project you should plan to record your decisions, methods and the development process so that when you write up your project in reports, papers, articles, and theses, and when you archive your data for reuse and verification, you have all the information required.
Ownership and Rights
As a researcher, you should clarify ownership of and rights relating to research data before a project starts. Ownership and rights will determine how the data can be managed into the future, so these should be documented early in a project.
Data sharing and Licensing
The decision to share your data will require the consideration of a number of issues relating to their subsequent discovery, access and future use. Find out here to identify the key points that you need to consider when making your data available to other researchers.
Data preservation
After you've finished with your data and published your work, you need to consider what data to keep, and what data to delete. This is a tough decision, but storing redundant data is expensive. Consider what can be reproduced and what tools you have produced that are independently valuable.