On December 14th, 2023, staff from multiple NIH ICOs (Institutes, Centers, and Offices) presented feedback based on analysis of the first year of Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) submissions at a webinar discussing outcomes of experimental DMSP templates used by the Federal Demonstration Partnership. NIH staff spoke to DMSPs as a whole, not just ones generated through the experimental FDP templates.
A recording of the webinar can be found on the "Learning" section of the sharing.nih.gov website, under the heading Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Town Hall #3, as well as the slide deck.
Some themes were:
- Between 1/4 and 1/5th of DMSPs were considered unacceptable. This was usually because not all Elements were addressed, or because the plan was out of compliance with the DMS Policy.
- Saying "data will be shared upon request" will result in an unsuccessful DMSP.
- Likewise, "data will be shared by publishing findings in a paper" will result in an unsuccessful DMSP.
- The ICOs are looking for things in DMSPs that are not explicitly spelled out in the policy, nor are they always included in sample DMSPs provided by NIH.
- One example of this is the expectation to include an estimated amount of data in MB/GB/TB for each data type in Element 1.
- Element 4 is very important and should inform your decisions about data standards, formats, and more. The POs and committees evaluating DMSPs are looking for the plan to name a specific data repository.
- Furthermore, NIH is firm about wanting data to go into data repositories. A statement that data would be shared via GitHub was grounds for NIMH to give the plan a bad evaluation (sharing code on GitHub is good, however). It is probably that other ad hoc ways to share data, such as on a lab website or via an ELN, will also be negatively received.
- ICO expectations for elaboration on tools necessary to access data vary.
- NCI expects software and tools to be named, and for it to be clear how they are obtained and if they're free or have a cost.
- NIMH is not concerned with if tools are free, but want any new software created for the project to have a plan to be made available to the public.
