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Future plans for DMPonline

Feedback on future developments for DMPonline gathered during the JISCMRD Workshop: Meeting (Disciplinary) Challenges in Research Data Management Planning on the 23rd March.

Kerry Miller | 26 March 2012

On Friday 23 March Adrian Richardson and I attended the JISCMRD Workshop: Meeting (Disciplinary) Challenges in Research Data Management Planning. Our purpose was to demonstrate DMPonline v3.0, which is due to be released soon, and to gather feedback on our future plans for developing DMPonline further. An outline of the programme and links to all the projects that made presentations are available online.

The responses to Adrian’s demonstration of DMPonline v3.0 were very positive and several attendees commented that some of their significant concerns had now been addressed. Adrian is currently seeking pre-release testers for v3.0, if you would like to help with this please get in touch.

After the demonstration attendees were asked to split into groups to discuss our list of 13 possible future developments. Each group selected and ranked their ‘top 5 priorities’ for the future of DMPonline, as well as adding any new developments they felt should be on the list.

The most popular choice amongst all the groups was

  1. Ability to give read and/or write access to plans to multiple users or institutions - this is due be implemented by early-May 2012.
  2. Application Programming Interface (API), Themed institutional interfaces with customised style sheets, guidance, suggested answers, & links, and Integration with RCUK Je-S form.
  3. Ability to host locally within institutions in preference to a managed cloud service, Ability to submit to institutional repositories, Improved statistical reports for institutions and/or funders, and UK Access Management Federation (Shibboleth) sign-in.

Each of these is being actively pursued and will be integrated into future releases of DMPonline. The remaining developments will not be forgotten, they will be implemented as and when opportunities arise.

Participants also made some very useful and interesting suggestions for new developments, including making DMPs ‘living documents’ by adding action points, achievements, and decisions to plans; giving users the ability to create their own questions; and the ability to submit requirements direct to IT services. These will be assessed and prioritised over the coming months for possible inclusion in future releases.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the workshop participants for giving us their valuable feedback.