Data Management and Publishing

Funding Requirements

In order to promote open access to research data, many funding agencies require that research data produced as part of a funded project be made publicly available and/or have instituted requirements for formal data management plans, including:

• National Science Foundation (NSF): Dissemination and Sharing of Research Results: Beginning January 18, 2011, NSF will require grant proposals to include a supplementary data management plan of no more than 2 pages. This requirement is a new implementation of the long-standing NSF Data Sharing Policy. See Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) Chapter II.C.2.j for more details. Note that some NSF Directorates, Programs, and Divisions have their own requirements. Need help? See our pages on writing an NSF data management plan and data management plans in general.
• National Institutes of Health: Data Sharing Policy: Supports the sharing of research data and expects researchers funded at $500,000 or more to include a data sharing plan in their grant proposals.
• For a more complete list of U.S. funding agencies’ data dissemination guidelines, see:
  • Data Sharing and Replication (Gary King, director of the Harvard-MIT Data Center)
  • Funding Agency and Data Management Guidelines (University of Minnesota Libraries)

Researchers can comply with these requirements by depositing their data into one of the many available data repositories. See also our page on creating a data management plan.