Presenting DMPCore: A Metadata Schema for Data Management Plan Repositories

This original research was presented at the 2020 42nd Annual Research Symposium at the College of Communication and Information at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville on March 2nd. This presentation won "Best Graduate Student Research Presentation" at the Symposium.

An increasing amount of funding agencies require Data Management Plans (DMPs) to be submitted at the time of applying for grant funding, for the purpose of ensuring researchers plan to collect, analyze, and secure their data in a manner congruent to the funding agency’s mission. Academic libraries, platforms such as DMPTool, and research agencies dedicated to data curation education are increasingly making DMPs publically available to serve as a reference for researchers developing their own DMPs. However, no classification scheme exists for describing these DMPs in order promote maximum discovery by interested researchers. Accordingly, in this research we outline an application profile and associated metadata schema, called DMPCore, that aims to provide a standardized method for organizing and describing these openly available DMPs, including categories of DMP subject, creator, affiliated institution(s), data analyses used, and data licensing within the project. As the world of research data management and data management planning continues to grow, DMPCore will support better access to example DMPs to use for educational and practical applications.

The website summarizing DMPCore and all the elements of the metadata schema can be viewed at this link: https://hannahcgunderman.github.io/INSC524_Final_Cannon_Gunderman/