DATA MANAGEMENT PLANS

The Center for Digital Scholarship and Services of OSU Libraries is interested in working with faculty (and graduate students) who wish to preserve research data.  This is prompted in part by recent changes at the NSF regarding "data management plans." 

One aspect of these plans is articulating where data will be preserved.  There are several options for repositories one of which is the ScholarsArchive@OSU which the Center oversees.

While you, the researcher, are knowledgeable about many of the aspects of creating a data management plan, we invite you to contact us concerning use of the ScholarsArchive@OSU and formats and metadata that may be needed to best preserve your data so that it can be accessed by others later. 

This guide is directed to those who specifically need to provide a Data Management Plan as part of a grant proposal.  In addition to this immediate need, there are many reasons to plan for long term data management and preservation.   These center on four main issues:

• Preservation and access to your research data over the long term raises the visibility of your research without placing you (unnecessarily) in the role of proprietor for all requests for that data;
• Documentation of changes to your research data throughout its life cyle adds to its long term integrity;
• The resultant open access to your data (at some point in its lifecyle) fosters the development of new knowledge while reducing unnecessary duplication of effort;
• Investing in a plan for data management now can save you time in the long run.

MIT Libraries presents a more detailed look at this rationale at: http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data-management/why.html

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