Open Data - Getting Started

Grant Funder Open Data Requirements:

See these lists for summaries of open data requirements, by agency/ organization:

• Research Funder Requirements: List curated by MIT Libraries
• Sherpa Juliet: Growing list of funder open access publishing policies and requirements. Sister site to Sherpa Romeo for publisher copyright policies and open access policies.
• SPARC: Browse Data Sharing Requirements by Federal Agency: Select up to 3 agencies, then scroll down to see, side by side. (Agency logos may show a "broken link" icon, but information is still available.)

Publisher/ Journal Open Data Policies:

See the journal author submission guidelines for specific journal information.

Disciplinary professional associations may also make their own recommendations:

• Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) (American Political Science Association) - Journal Editor's Transparency Statement: Description and list of journals that have joined this movement

Sample open data policies from major publishers:

• Elsevier
• Springer
• Nature Publishing
• SAGE Publishing (see journal submission guidelines)
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley

Data Management Plan (DMP) resources:

• Guidelines for effective data management plans: ICPSR suggestions of which elements to include in a DMP, a useful list of example plans, and guidance resources

• Write a Data Management Plan: from MIT Libraries

• Checklist for a Data Management Plan: from the Digital Curation Centre (based in UK, but still relevant to US funder requirements)

• How to Develop a Data Management and Sharing Plan: Also from the Digital Curation Centre​​​

DMP Examples:

• NSF example DMPs: example links at the bottom of this DataOne page
• University of Minnesota DMP examples: arranged by discipline

DMP Management using Statistical Software:

• Data Management with R: from datascience+, and online community of data scientists

• Data Management and Python: from datascience+, and online community of data scientists

• Data management by using R: Big data clinical research series: Article from the Annals of Translational Medicine; R language basics

DMP Online Tools:

Open Science Framework: Open source software for collaborating, project management, workflow, research products, and repository

SEAD: Open source software for collaborating, project and metadata management, and easily publishing data to ICPSR repositories

DMPTool:

A free online service for creating funder required data management plans --created through a collaboration of California Digital Library and DataONE.

• DMP Requirements: DMP templates by funding agency

Software Tools Catalog: Browse or search for software tools to help you with data management, and more. From DataONE.

Librarians can help with data management planning:

• Reviewing or co-authoring data management plan sections of grant applications

• Considering what information would need to be captured in order to help others discover, understand or make use of the data, as well as how that information could be captured and presented

• Connecting researcher to other resources on campus to help with technical, privacy, or analysis considerations
• Investigating online tools to help in research data management

(Adapted and modified from University of Michigan Library, Research Data Services: https://www.lib.umich.edu/research-data-services)