Tools: Data Management Plan
There are already various online tools available to help researchers create a Data Management Plan (DMP). These tools have different focuses and are aligned with different requirements and standards:
- RDMO: https://rdmorganiser.github.io/
The Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO) is a generic tool designed for creating DMPs and operating as a local instance, allowing full customization to meet the needs of the hosting institution and its users. Key features of RDMO include:- Freely configurable questionnaires based on pre-installed questions, with the ability to easily add new questions to the local system
- Pre-configured views to ensure compatibility with the requirements of certain research funders (H2020, SNF) and other tools (DMPTool, DMPonline)
- Output of DMPs in various formats (e.g., .docx, .tex, .pdf)
- Storage of „snapshots“ to track the temporal development of a DMP
- Multilingual support (German, English, French; Italian is in progress)
- Suitable for both small projects and large collaborative projects
- RDMO is available as open-source software on GitHub1GitHub is an online service that enables software developers to collaborate on software projects and make them available for download by users.
- DMPTool: https://dmptool.org/
The University of California Curation Center at the California Digital Library (CDL) operates DMPTool, a tool for the collaborative creation of data management plans. It is particularly tailored to the U.S. funding landscape, where many different funding institutions have their own specific DMP requirements. The tool helps users find the „right“ template for their DMP and displays the relevant sections of funding guidelines for each part of the plan. The entered data can then be exported in a suitable format and attached to the funding application. The source code of the application is published under the MIT License.
- DMPonline: https://www.dcc.ac.uk/dmponline
Developed by the Digital Curation Center/UK, DMPonline is available in English. It provides various templates that users can choose from. By answering a series of questions, users are guided to the most suitable template for their needs.
Using these tools, DMP content can be saved, adjusted, shared, collaboratively edited, and exported2More information and additional tools can be found at: https://www.forschungsdaten.org/index.php/DMP-Tools.
However, these listed tools are currently only partially useful for ethnographic projects. The development of an appropriate template for ethnographic research is still pending.