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DMPs: the long game

Kathryn Unsworth, Liz Stokes, Siddeswara Guru, Carmi Cronje, Peter Neish | 11 November 2020

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Kathryn Unsworth, Skills Consultant (National Coordination & Communities), ARDC

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Liz Stokes, Senior Research Data Skills Specialist, ARDC

Pre-blog note:

ARDC extends its congratulations to the folk at DCC. What an achievement for DMPonline hitting a 10 year milestone, all the while championing data management best practice and moving it ever forward. Well done and enjoy your celebrations!

Thanks too for giving us the opportunity to write the following blog as part of these celebrations.

DMPs: the long game

It’s kind of ironic that having long championed DMPs for their ability to save us from ourselves years down the track, we have the opportunity to reflect on the different paths taken by Australian organisations and institutions in the formation of DMP infrastructure.

Data management planning is a tenet of best practice in research data management (RDM)

Globally, data management planning is recognised as essential for successfully managing research data to deliver effective research projects, and also for ensuring that data generated from research are ready for reuse. Inadequate planning can lead to a breakdown in data management processes, which can produce outcomes such as poor data quality, data loss, the violation of people’s privacy and many other unforeseen consequences. Planning mitigates many downstream issues. Planning early and putting in place sound and straightforward data management procedures can provide significant efficiencies in the later stages of the project. With this recognition there has been a proliferation of tools and approaches to data management planning.

Different compliance approaches

Many international funders moved to mandate the use of data management plans (DMPs) in the late 2000s. Australia was somewhat slower out of the blocks in adopting DMPs, however, there was a clear rationale for the approach taken by Australian funders.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) saw value in acknowledging DMPs as ‘best practice’ in research data management (RDM) policy, but were mindful of the implications for research institutions who would need to comply with any newly mandated requirements. Instead, Australian funders took an approach that first allowed institutions to get their houses in order. All the while, encouraging the implementation of data governance and data management policies that included DMPs in institutional policy frameworks.

Rather than funders wielding their big compliance stick at a time when many research institutions lacked the capability to comply in a meaningful way, slower evolution of funder policy afforded institutions time. This time enabled institutions to develop research data management policy and associated support services and technologies more holistically in accord with their specific capabilities and needs. For example, less research intensive institutions could opt for different solutions to those of leading research institutions, avoiding over-engineering, and instead, tailor their RDM policy to match the needs of their smaller cohorts of researchers. Research intensive universities were more likely to adopt RDM policies and technologies that would extend and scale easily to match their research intensive demands.

Australian research institutions step up

The early versions of DMPs, long and daunting, and often in Word document formats are now becoming a thing of the past with many institutions moving to next generation tools. Now there is a greater emphasis on infrastructure that creates machine parsable, human readable DMPs, which collect and reuse data from other enterprise systems to facilitate a light touch to the administrative burden on researchers. 

Differing approaches are emerging. Many institutions and research organisations are adopting, adapting or creating their own DMP tools to integrate with their research enterprise systems. We are seeing less of DMPs as standalone forms. The integrations currently being adopted include:

  • DMPs linked to ethics approval systems, data classification policy, and data publishing workflows.
  • DMP completion as a requirement for storage allocation with direct storage provisioning through the DMP tool.
  • Automated population of DMPs with metadata from project management, business intelligence and other enterprise systems - created once, used many times - reducing error and admin overhead, and enabling greater linkages and more comprehensive reporting on research outcomes.
  • RDM training modules developed in line with the DMP tool, where on completion of the training the researcher has initiated and completed an early phase DMP for their research project.
  • Use of cloud services to enable collaborative use of DMPs across institutions and industry partners.

What DMP tools proliferate in Australia?

What Australian research institutions have to say about DMPs...

Siddeswara Guru (Data Services and Analytics Platform Lead of the TERN repository) is enthusiastic about the value proposition DMPs make for data published by TERN.

“From a TERN perspective, DMP is an important aspect to develop a cohesive data management practice across different varieties of data TERN publishes. The DMP helps us to formalise how data is managed and make them FAIR. One of the challenges is to keep track of the evolution of data through DMP and regular updates to them. Any tools that promote and enable active management of DMPs are useful.”

Carmi Cronje (Data Librarian at CSIRO), attributes the success of CSIRO’s Research Data Planner to the close partnership approach in development with scientists and data management stakeholders within the organisation. One year on, “Uptake has been positive and greatly facilitated by Data Steward initiatives in individual research disciplines, such as week-long data management training programs to raise awareness and address specific challenges” says Carmi. “Work continues on the tool’s development and the supporting infrastructure, to keep moving towards an integrated and consistent approach to managing research data across the organisation. What provided the clincher to getting people around the table? A collective desire to achieve better outcomes”.

Peter Neish (Research Data Curator at University of Melbourne) talks candidly about getting people around the table, “DMPs affect many parts of the organisation, so getting everyone in the room is very important - ethics, infrastructure, library and most importantly researchers! However, DMPs are not going to solve every problem and scope creep is something to avoid - DMPs are but one cog in a larger picture of good RDM practice. We started by coupling our DMPonline instance with our DMP online training - each reinforced the other.

We hope that in the future our systems will interoperate better and make use of the DMP common standard to transfer information between systems. There will never be a single DMP system, but there should be common frameworks for sharing information between these systems. One of the great things to see this year was the DMP hackathon where teams worked to test out the DMP common standard on many different systems in different ways”.

Note: In line with local needs and global movements, Australian funders continue to strengthen their requirements for DMPs

After the dust settled and research institutions demonstrated clear intent and purpose around data management, Australian funders undertook a review of many data-related national policies. The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2018 is now principles based and underpinned by a number of supplementary guides, one of which is the Management of Data and Information in Research, which strongly encourages the development of a DMP. The ARC has only just this year (2020) moved from a position made in February 2014 requiring researchers to “outline how they plan to manage research data arising from ARC-funded research”, to a stronger position requiring that plans be in place prior to the commencement of a project, noting there isn’t a requirement for detailed data management plans to be submitted for assessment.

The path to better DMP infrastructure has indeed been a long game, and it is constantly evolving. It hasn’t only been a problem about creating the perfect technical service, but attending to the cultural change necessary where people actively want to avoid data mismanagement snafus. Building opportunities for communities to come together in partnership and collaborate requires patience and resilience, and we are all the better for it.

Blog post contributors:

Kathryn Unsworth - Skills Consultant (National Coordination & Communities), ARDC

Liz Stokes - Senior Research Data Skills Specialist, ARDC

Siddeswara Guru - Data Services and Analytics Platform Lead, TERN

Carmi Cronje - Data Librarian, CSIRO

Peter Neish - Research Data Curator, University of Melbourne

We would like to say thanks to Kathryn and Liz for sharing with us this very interesting perspective explaining different paths taken by Australian organisations and institutions in the formation of DMP infrastructure and writing for us this blog post for DMPonline 10th year anniversary! 

As always, we are keen to hear from you about how you use the tool, how RDM works at your institution and fits within your workflows and also how we can improve it, so please feel free to contact us at the details below: 

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