A group of major research institutions is partnering to develop a flexible online tool to help researchers generate data management plans. This effort is in response to demands from funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that researchers plan for managing their research data.
The partners in this project include the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library, the UCLA Library , the UCSD Libraries, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Virginia Library , the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , DataONE, and the United Kingdom’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC).
By joining forces the partners expect to consolidate expertise and reduce costs in addressing data management needs. The primary goal of the partnership is to simplify the process of creating plans while increasing the quality of decisions made by funders to pre-define policies and infrastructures that support research activities. CDL Executive Director Laine Farley stated, “This tool will streamline UC faculty’s ability to produce a credible and high-quality plan for managing data. An important consequence of that is the general raising of awareness about the services that libraries provide in data curation.”
California Digital Library , the UCLA Library , the UCSD Libraries , the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the University of Virginia Library , and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are DLF community members.