Data Management Plans

What is a data management plan (DMP)?

A data management plan (DMP) is a written document that describes the data you expect to acquire or generate during the course of a research project, how you will manage, describe, analyze, and store those data, and what mechanisms you will use at the end of your project to share and preserve your data.

Data Management and Data Sharing Plans are part of most federal grant applications.

Data Management Plan Guide

The University Library's Data Management Plan Guide is a complete resource on data management. The guide contains an FAQ section, learning module (Write a DMP), agency requirements, and more. If you plan to use DataShare in your data management plan please email datashare@iastate.edu for assistance.

A tool to help you write a data management plan, DMPTool offers templates for most agencies as well as sample DMPs (quality of the samples varies). The DMPTool is managed by the California Digital Library and access is provided by the University Library.

DMP Consultations

You may book a data managment plan consultation with one of our librarians who are knowledgable of agency requirements, data sharing, and data management best practices. 

If you would like to schedule a consultation or have general questions about data management please contact your librarian or email ISU's DataShare for help.