The 2022 memo Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research (the Nelson Memo) requires all U.S. federal granting agencies to establish data sharing policies. This article explains how to find these policies.
What Is a Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy?
According to the NNLM Data Glossary, “Data sharing refers to the practice of making data available to other research stakeholders, including other investigators, research subjects, and the broader public. Various funding agencies, publishers, and other research institutions mandate data sharing as a means to promote transparency, research reproducibility, and to increase the impact of research data.”
Institutions often include stipulations on data management, retention, and sharing in the same policy. In the research data lifecycle, the stages of management, retention, and sharing flow together. Good data management helps to ensure good data retention and sharing.
While many institutions have data sharing policies, this article focuses on funder policies.
Why Are Funders’ Data Management and Sharing Policies Important for Researchers?
When applying for a grant, researchers should consider how to address the funder’s data management and sharing policy in their application. Usually, this will be addressed through a formal data management plan (DMP). To ensure compliance, researchers should review the requirements before writing their application.
How Can You Find Funder Data Sharing Requirements?
Here are some places to check for funder requirements:
- The funding announcement: Most grant programs create an announcement – which may be called by various acronyms, such as a CFP (call for proposals) or NOFO (notice of funding opportunity) – to publicize their funding opportunity. After navigating to the funding announcement, you can scan through the associated links to look for information on the funder’s data management plan requirements. Below, you can see the information provided in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Notice of Funding Opportunity:
If the funding announcement does not have the information you need, proceed to the other items on this list. - Funder application instructions or website: Large funders will have a website set up to help researchers through the application process. Looking through the documentation can help you understand their requirements for data management plans. This example from the NIH application instructions redirects you to sharing.nih.gov, their website specifically for data sharing:
- SPARC directory of data sharing requirements of federal agencies: SPARC stands for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a nonprofit that supports open research and education systems. Through this website, you can view and compare data sharing policies from top funding organizations.
- Google search: Often googling “[funder name]” AND “data sharing requirements” OR “data management plan” OR “dmp” will direct you to the appropriate documentation.
- Contact the funder: If you are still not sure about what guidance to follow, consider reaching out to the research office contact in the funding announcement.
Sources
Bohman, Lena, Daria Orlowska, and Marla Hertz. “DMP Resources.” DMP Course for Librarians, 2023. https://ucla-imls-open-sci.info/dmp101/dmp-resources.html.
Waithira, Naomi, Brian Mutinda, and Phaik Yeong Cheah. “Data Management and Sharing Policy: The First Step towards Promoting Data Sharing.” BMC Medicine 17, No. 1 (April 17, 2019): 80. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1315-8.