As we approach our target release date of Feb 2018 for the DMP Roadmap platform, the DMPTool team has embarked on a major housekeeping effort. A top-to-bottom content review is underway, and last week we began an audit of the funder templates and guidance. Ten participants gathered for an all-day, pizza-fueled event that amounted to a huge template success (but an epic pizza fail, see evidence below). We were so productive and gratified by the opportunity to analyze multiple DMP policies in a group setting that we decided to make it an annual event. Read on for more DMPTool funder template news + migration plans, followed by brief updates on the DMP Roadmap project and machine-actionable DMPs.
DMPTool funder templates
The DMPTool is a hugely popular community resource in part because it serves as a central clearinghouse of information about DMP requirements and guidance for researchers applying for grants from U.S. funding agencies. Migrating the DMPTool data to the new platform provides an opportunity to update and normalize things to maintain this value. [Side note: we’re also adding a “Last updated” field to the DMP Requirements table as an enhancement in the new platform per your feedback.]
At present the tool contains 32 templates for 16 different federal and private funders. This top 10 templates list demonstrates that our users are especially keen on getting support with NSF and NIH grant proposals, although the NEH is #7, and DOE and others aren’t far behind. Some global usage statistics to put these numbers in context: 26.8k users have created 20k plans; and we have 216 participating institutions (mostly U.S. colleges and universities).
Our goals for the pizza party included: 1) ensuring that template language comes directly from the most recent versions of funder policy documents; and 2) applying themes (more on themes here). Staying up to date with DMP requirements remains a crowdsourced effort spearheaded by data librarians using the Twitter hashtag #OSTPResp and a Google spreadsheet. In the past year, two additional resources entered the scene: a list of public access plans from U.S. federal agencies at CENDI.gov and this lovely SPARC tool. Using these reference materials and some additional internet research, we updated 7 links to policy documents in the current DMPTool platform (NIH-GDS, NEH-ODH, NSF-CHE, NOAA, USDA-NIFA, Joint Fire Science Program, Sloan) and made some revisions to templates in the new platform (mostly formatting). We also identified some templates that require deeper investigation and/or consultation with agency contacts to verify the best way to present DMP requirements; between now and the release date we’ll continue to work on these templates. In addition, Jackie Wilson is contracting with us to finalize the clean-up of templates and guidance (checking links and guidance text provided by funders).
#pizzafail
By January we aim to have a beta DMPTool-branded version of the new platform ready for training and testing purposes. Stay tuned for a rollout plan in the new year that includes webinars for institutional administrators, with an orientation to templates and themes. Also, please note that we will be disabling template editing functionality on 18 Dec in the current version of DMPTool to maintain the integrity of template data in the new platform. For admin users who wish to make changes to templates and guidance after that date, you can contact the helpdesk, but it would be great if you can keep changes to a minimum. All other functionality in the current DMPTool will remain the same up to the final migration date (adding new users, institutions, creating and editing plans, etc.)
A million thanks to the 2017 template fixing team: Amy Neeser, Joan Starr, Alana Miller, Jackie Wilson, Marisa Strong, Daniella Lowenberg, Perry Willett, John Chodacki, and Stephen Abrams.
DMP Roadmap update
The co-development team is busy building and refining the final MVP features. The usage dashboard is the last new feature left to add. In the meantime, parallel data migration efforts are underway at DCC to move from the existing 28 DMPonline themes to the new set of 14. By January both service teams will be working on new user guides, updating other content, testing and branding. If all continues to go smoothly, we’ll be on track for a DMP Roadmap demo at IDCC in Barcelona (19–22 Feb) and an official code release. Stay tuned!
Machine-actionable DMPs
On the machine-actionable DMP front, there are two items to report:
- We’ll be emailing the various DMP lists shortly to encourage everyone to participate in working meetings for the RDA WGs (DMP Common Standards & Exposing DMPs) at the next plenary. For now mark your calendars for 21–23 Mar and join us in Berlin!
- Following on a productive session at FORCE2017, we’re finishing a draft of the 10 Simple Rules for Machine-Actionable DMPs that we will circulate soon soon.
As always, we encourage you to contact us to get involved!