Five things that you need to pay attention to when checking a Data Management Plan
As part of the Go/No-Go of a PhD a Data Management Plan is required (PhDs that started after 1st of January 2020).
To help you check the Data Management Plan, this posts describes five things to consider (original source):
1. Was a Data Steward consulted?
You are not obliged to ask the Data Steward for support on a Data Management Plan, but they can provide you with valuable input and provide advise.
2. Are you happy with how the data/code is stored?
Ensure that the data will be stored using a storage solution that is automatically backed up and that all project members have access to the data they need to have access to (especially important that access is restricted when working with personal data or confidential data - see Section 1.4). See TU Delft storage solutions for recommended solutions.
3. Is the data properly organised and documented?
Can you easily figure out which file is what? If you open some of the files, are they properly labelled and described? If the individual responsible for data collection would leave the university, can you still make sense of the data without their input? See the data organisation and documentation posts for more information.
4. Does the project deal with confidential data?
Is the confidential data handled properly? Here the advise of the Data Steward can come in extra handy and is required for personal data (as part of the HREC application).
Confidential data can contain:
Personal information which can allow the identification of living individuals
Commercially-confidential information (something you might want to patent, or data belonging to a third party)
Information related to national security, export control regulations etc.
5. Is there a clear strategy for data sharing?
TU Delft Research Data Framework Policy requires all PhD students who started on or after 1 January 2019 to deposit research data (and code) supporting their theses before they can graduate .
Did the project team agree what data (and code), when and how will be shared? (See what data should be shared post)
Will there be any difficulties with data sharing (perhaps not all data is suitable for sharing)?
What licence will be the most suitable for the data (and code)?
In principle, for most research done at TU Delft, it is suitable to make the data and code underpinning research findings available in a data repository. Typically, this is done at the same time as publishing the related papers, theses or reports. TU Delft has a dedicated data repository, 4TU.ResearchData, where all TU Delft researchers can deposit up to 1TB of data per year (per researcher) free of charge. Learn more about how to use 4TU.ResearchData to share the data/code. Discipline specific repositories might also be suitable (the Data Steward can advise).