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. She, along with Dr. Kelly Robertson, led the development of The Evaluation Center's online training program, Valeo (valeoeval.com)

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