Introducing the ‘Support Package for Data Management Plans for Norwegian Higher Education libraries’

Abstract

This workshop presents the resources produced in the 1-year project Data Management Plans: Support package for Norwegian higher education libraries (October 2023-2024). Academic support structures including libraries face a growing demand for supporting researchers with research data management (RDM) and, alongside increasing funder requirements, writing of data management plans (DMP). We will focus on how the project results and insights can be applied in institutional RDM support services.

The presented support package consists of resources for research support staff in the form of a knowledge base, and for researchers in the form of a DMP template and an accompanying supporting information. All generated text resources are sustained through an open contribution and maintenance process and are available under an open license.

The knowledge base for support personnel is based on the DMP guidance by Science Europe, which is recommended across research funders. It has been annotated in the Norwegian context and includes mappings with funder templates, machine-actionable DMP (maDMP) coverage, and stakeholder interests. We will further share reflections on project and user needs and dimensions that define complexity of a DMP. Based on these conceptual insights, we invite colleagues to discuss which project needs, DMP requirements, and stakeholders are central to their organization and users.

For use by researchers, the project furthermore developed short texts for use in digital DMP tools that were implemented as discipline-agnostic knowledge model and connected questionnaires/templates in the DMP-tool Data Stewardship Wizard. To cater to different project needs and not expose users to irrelevant questions, we make use of conditional follow-up questions and project phases. In addition, a filtering function lays basis for providing a set of five distinct questionnaires adjusted to different user groups, without the need to maintain parallel template versions. The DMP questionnaire is accompanied by a website with general and question-specific supporting information. There will be the opportunity for practical testing of different variants of the questionnaire in group work. In addition, we will briefly demonstrate how the questionnaire could be adapted to institutional or disciplinary needs.

We are looking forward to sharing the project results developed in a collaboration of the Universities in Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim, Tromsø, ELIXIR Norway, and PhD-on-Track and supported by the National Library of Norway. With this workshop, we wish to motivate colleagues in research support roles to adopt the DMP support package.

Importantly, we will also include brief demonstrations of how everyone can participate in keeping the common resources updated and how they can be adapted to individual needs. We invite the Norwegian research data community to contribute to maintenance and further development of these open resources.