Data management planning

Data management planing is a process of defining and documenting strategy for management of research data in each step of research data lifecycle throughout the research project. The main goal of the process is to ensure data is properly handled. To achieve this goal, a concise and complete document (Data Management Plan - DMP) shall be created. This plan will help all stakeholders avoid unexpected and unnecessary issues before, during, and after the project. Data management plan also contributes to adoption of best data management practices (FAIR principles, Open Science, Ethical standards, …) and as such it is increasingly required by funders along the project proposal.

As data management planning became a standard in research environment and beyond, ELIXIR-LU provides guidance and tools to facilitate all stages of the process.

Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW)

ELIXIR-LU has adopted the DSW, an online tool developed by ELIXIR-CZ and ELIXIR-NL, to help you write a DMP and manage your plans throughout a project. Templates of the main European (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe) and Luxembourgish (FNR) funding bodies are provided in all the instances along the detailed guidance on each question.

Available instances

ELIXIR-LU provides following DSW instances:

  • ELIXIR-LU instance is intended for a real data management planning performed by all researchers affiliated to research organizations in Luxembourg.
  • Learning instance can be used during demos and trainings. The instance provides all features but the records are deleted on regular basis.

Users can connect with basic set of permissions allowing them to create and manage project data management plans (questionnaires) based on one of the predefined questionnaire templates (knowledge models). They can also expose the plan by sharing or publication. Finally, users are able to export the information using of the predefined document templates matching templates provided by various funders.

FAQs

How does the DSW differ from templates provided by funders?

Compared to the documents provided by funders, DSW is web based tool that includes guidance on each question, external references, complex questionnaires with branching logic and supports collaborative editing with comments and TODOs. The questions in some of the questionnaires are more granular allowing for more detailed (but slightly more demanding) planning.

Can I use the instances free of charge?

The service is provided free of charge.

How do I connect?

Our instances support 2 ways of authentication. You can either Sign up using an email of your choice or use login of your institution via LifeScience login service. The latter requires your organization to be registered in the European Life Science Research Infrastructure as an identity provider.

I would like to change the templates. Is it possible?

No. As a regular user, you don’t have the permissions to change the templates. Elevated role “Data Steward” is needed to perform the task. You can contact ELIXIR-LU with your request. While general enhancements of the templates are appreciated, any institution/user specific change won’t be accepted.

My DMP contains confidential/sensitive information. Can I use DSW provided by ELIXIR-LU?

ELIXIR-LU administrators have permissions to access the data stored in the tool. At the moment, these are data stewards from University of Luxembourg and Luxembourg National Data Service (LNDS). Additionally, the instances are deployed and maintained by ELIXIR-CZ in Czechia, namely at the Czech Technical University in Prague. See the DSW Cloud for Elixir Privacy the DSW Terms of Service for more details.

In case of confidential or sensitive data, we recommend to deploy your own (institutional) instance of the tool.

Guidance and support

The tool is introduced in several of our trainings focused on research data management (see our upcoming trainings for more detail). Hands-on demos and trainings can be also provided upon request. See our contact page for more details.