DMPs are not evaluation plans, but they should address how evaluation data will be handled and possibly shared.

DMPs are required for all NSF proposals, uploaded as a Supplementary Document in the FastLane.gov proposal submission system. They can be up to two pages long and should describe

  • the kind of data you will gather
  • how you’ll format the data and metadata (metadata is documentation about what your primary data are)
  • what policies will govern the access and use of your data by others
  • how you’ll protect privacy, confidentiality, security, and intellectual property
  • who would be interested in accessing your data and in what ways they might use it
  • your plans for archiving the data and preserving access to them

To learn more about data management plans, check out these resources:

About the Authors

Lori Wingate

Lori Wingate box with arrow

Executive Director, The Evaluation Center, Western Michigan University

Lori has a Ph.D. in evaluation and more than 20 years of experience in the field of program evaluation. She is co-principal investigator of EvaluATE and leads a variety of evaluation projects at WMU focused on STEM education, health, and higher education initiatives. Dr. Wingate has led numerous webinars and workshops on evaluation in a variety of contexts, including CDC University and the American Evaluation Association Summer Evaluation Institute. She is an associate member of the graduate faculty at WMU.

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