The DMPTool NIH template project: Policy analysis, practical implementation

Background: After the NIH’s new Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy was announced, researchers needed guidance to help make DMS Plans. Members of the Editorial board of DMPTool, the data management planning and plan templating tool, formed a team of librarians to work on an NIH DMS Plan template. Because there was not one canonical policy document to harness, the template project team had a complex policy analysis job. The team combined librarians who had extensive DMP-writing experience but no NIH experience, with librarians who knew health and the NIH but not the DMPTool. Together this team of librarians worked to synthesize and curate NIH policy guidance in preparation for this year’s DMS Plan rollout.

Description: Over the course of different additions to guidance from varying routes, the Template team strove to reach consensus on what the most useful parts of the Policy and related content would be. In several cases, our attempts to guess the future turned out incorrect and we had to backtrack changes to match new understandings. Throughout, the committee members read NIH policy statements closely for what was said and what was not said in the DMS Policy and related guidance. What was not specified often came into discussions as much as what was specified. In addition, past experiences and current use cases were discussed to try to test the usefulness of what was included in the Template. Furthermore, popular demand encouraged the addition of “example answers” to help researchers and librarians see how one might address the DMS Plan elements. However, there is not one answer that can cover most or even a good range of data scenarios. The committee members therefore worked on providing a range of possible example answers that would encourage, rather than limit, researcher thinning through how different data might need different answers to the Plan elements.

Conclusion: The DMPTool NIH-GEN DMSP template has been frequently updated to keep up with evolving text and guidance. In addition, content has been added in response to community input. By bringing multiple perspectives together, we enriched the conversations and built greater expertise. The Template reflects best known practices based on evolving and uncertain guidance, to help support everyone with the new Plan. In this session we will show the Template and touch on key policy documents that were incorporated, to help attendees understand how policy and practice come together in the DMPTool NIH template for data management and sharing.