Eawag SNF / SNSF Data Management Plan Guide

Version 1.1 (2018-01-29) – Harald von Waldow

The Eawag RDM project

Disclaimer

The instructions in this document are provided in the hope that they are useful to prepare the research data management plan that is required by the SNSF to be submitted along with project applications in mySNF starting Octber 2017. This guide is in part Eawag-specific.

Warning

This document was not vetted by the SNSF, use at your own risk.

This guide provides instructions for creating a data management plan (DMP) as required by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) as mandatory part of grant applications.

The SNSF requirement for a DMP serves to implement it’s policy on Open Research Data. Projects that create a DMP, follow it and keep it up-to-date will be in an excellent position to publish their research data as “Open Data” at the end of the project, which is the main goal of SNSF’s Open Data Policy and can also have a number of advantages for the researchers and institutions involved, e.g. a potentially increased citation rate [Piwowar2013].

The other reason to implement a DMP is a better guard against data loss, better chances for a maintained high data quality, more effcient research organization and a better chance that the reserch project stays within schedule.

A DMP should be regarded as a project management tool and exist as a “living document” that prescribes and tracks all facets of data management during the research data lifecycle. “Data” should be seen as a ressource that needs to be managed, just as the financial budget or human resources.

Please consult this presentation for more information about the new SNSF requirement and data management plans in general.

Structure

The structure of the document follows the mySNF form for the data management plan.

3. Data storage and preservation

3.1. How will your data be stored and backed-up?

3.2 What is your data preservation plan?

Help text by the SNSF is quoted at the beginning of each section in a grey box:

SNSF

The SNSF explains how the question is meant.

Instructions

1. check whether a
2. check whether b
3. if neither a nor b, use the standard-snippet and move on.

Instructions contain step-by-step guidance on how to produce a good answer to the respective question:

Eawag standard snippets

Eawag standard snippets

Green boxes with text snippets, often Eawag specific.

We expect that those can be used in many cases verbatim, or with little modification.

Warning

Do not copy & paste blindy!.

Examples

Example 1

Lore ipsum quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni

Example 2

dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est,

Warning

Examples are almost never examples for a complete answer of the section. They are examples for pieces that could, possibly, be part of an answer. We are lacking good examples. If you have written a data management plan, please consider donating it to the Eawag Research Data Management Project <rdm@eawag.ch> so that we can improve this document.