NSF DMP content analysis: What are researchers saying?

CON T E N T S NEX T PAGE > < PRE V I OUS PAGE T he National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented its requirement that all grant proposals include a data management plan (DMP) in January 2011. Like our colleagues at research institutions across the United States, librarians and technologists at Georgia Tech developed services to support this mandate, including guidelines and workshops for developing a DMP. Toward the end of the requirement's first year, we assessed the impact of our consultation and outreach services by reviewing the content of submitted data management plans. In cooperation with the GT Office of Sponsored Programs, we examined NSF DMPs submitted by Georgia Tech researchers during the first eight months of the mandate (through September 6, 2011). Of the 335 submitted proposals, we reviewed the content of 181 plans. We excluded those proposals that were grant supplements or transfers. Using plagiarism software, we searched DMP content for information related to repository services, interand intradepartmental sharing of DMPs and the prevalence of cloud-based tools. This brief article outlines our findings and their influence on strategic planning for a range of research data curation services, including data repository services and related data stewardship initiatives.