Consultation on data management planning checklist and themes

We've reported before that a revision of the DCC Checklist for a Data Management Plan was taking place as part of wider work on DMPonline. Users wanted a much shorter, researcher-friendly set of core questions. We have overhauled the Checklist and are now releasing two documents for comment - the checklist itself and a set of themes which inform it. They are explained below, along with details on the consultation process.

The revised Checklist proposes 13 questions under 8 headings:

• Administrative Data
• Data Collection
• Documentation and Metadata
• Ethics and Legal Compliance
• Storage and Backup
• Selection and Preservation
• Data Sharing
• Responsibilities and Resources

Supplementary questions are provided as pointers for consideration, as well as brief, generic guidance. The Checklist will be used as the basis of a generic DMP template and as a starting point for institutions wishing to customise DMPonline. It has been abstracted from the more detailed list of DMP themes which will be used to map relevant guidance from funders, institutions and disciplines to templates in DMPonline - this allows guidance produced in one context to be reused in others with minimal effort. This list of DMP themes aims to represent all the discrete concerns that may be addressed in a DMP. It is provided here to help contextualise the revised Checklist.

We welcome feedback on the relevance of this Checklist:

• are all the key points covered?
• is the language and guidance appropriate?
• does this fit your needs?

Please provide comments by Monday 3rd June so we can finalise the Checklist and release it for use. You can provide your feedback as comments on this article, or directly to us by email: info@dcc.ac.uk . Thanks in advance for your input.