Forging Collaboration: Centering the Library in Coordinating Education on the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy at an Academic Medical Center

Background: Policy changes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) present a novel opportunity for libraries to center themselves in coordinating data management policy changes within their institutions. The new Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy requires researchers to submit DMS plans with their applications for funding. Per the policy, an investigator’s non-compliance with approved plans may reflect on future funding for an institution as a whole, necessitating widespread awareness. At an academic medical center, librarians led a coordinated cross-departmental effort to disseminate information and skills about the forthcoming DMS policy.

Description: When the NIH DMS policy was finalized, the library approached institutional research leadership with concerns about institutional readiness. To prepare, leadership and the library created a cross-departmental working group to determine educational and outreach priorities for the policy. Working group membership included representation from academic departments, shared scientific cores, the institutional review board (IRB), information technology, and research administration offices. With this working group, the library developed a multi-pronged approach to educate researchers and staff impacted by the NIH DMS policy through synchronous classes and asynchronous materials distributed through official channels. Training courses were tailored to meet various needs of research and grant staff: voluntary synchronous classes were approximately an hour long; and a 15-minute asynchronous online course was developed to cover DMS policy fundamentals, including elements of DMS plans. The cross-departmental working group partnership will extend beyond the rollout of training through participation in a shared inbox for DMS queries that is managed by representatives from the offices participating in the working group.

Conclusion: Spearheading the education effort, the library will be able to access metrics on attendance to trainings on the NIH DMS. To date, the synchronous workshops have been attended by over 200 research staff and a newly launched institutional homepage on the DMS policy has received nearly 500 views. The asynchronous course is accessible to all research staff at the institution through a distributed learning platform. The volume of queries received through the shared inbox and DMPTool feedback request function will be assessed at a future date. Direct feedback from researchers will be an invaluable metric for the effectiveness of available resources and for continued development of materials to support policy compliance.