A Data Management Plan (DMP) details how data will be collected, processed, analyzed, described, preserved, and shared during the course of a research project.
For effective data management, planning how research data will be managed over the length of a research project and beyond should start at the beginning when the research is being designed. A data management plan will be an ideal planning tool and documentation of the planned management activities.
A data management plan that is associated with a research study must include comprehensive information about the data such as the types of data produced, the metadata standards used, the policies for access and sharing, and the plans for archiving and preserving data so that it is accessible over time.
Note:
A DMP is a living document. You should revisit and review it regularly as your research project progresses. You may need to edit and update your DMP to reflect any changes made in your research to ensure that it meets your needs.
The HKU policy on research data and records management specified that researchers are responsible for developing and documenting the research data management activities and information, where appropriate, in a Data Management Plan (DMP), including but not limited to:
Data collection (e.g. types of data and formats, methodologies, standards, when to be generated and by who, etc.)
Ethics and Intellectual Property concerns (e.g. compliance with legal obligations, funding body requirements, and protocols of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC), etc.)
Data storage and back-up
Data sharing, access and re-use
Strategy for long-term preservation and retention, and destruction of data if necessary (e.g. sensitive data with personal identifiers)
Roles and responsibility for activities throughout the data lifecycle, and on-going custodianship after the completion of the research
For Research Postgraduate (RPg) students, the Handbook for PhD and MPhil Programmes states that:
A candidate who registers in September 2017 and thereafter has to submit a Data Management Plan (DMP) before the expiry of his/her probationary period if data is to be collected or generated as part of the research.
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It will be useful for you to write a Data Management Plan following a template available on the DMPTool. It is an online tool that helps and guides you to draft your DMP covering the elements discussed in the previous section. HKU researchers and students can login with the HKU Portal credentials to access university-specific guidance and templates. Learn more about how to use DMPTool on this page. |
Example DMPs: