LibGuides: Data Management: Policies & Guidelines

Funder Requirements

Many funding agencies require formal data management and/or sharing plans as part of their granting process. Each funding agency has specific requirements so be sure to check for your specific grant.

Collection of Funder Requirements
This non-comprehensive list includes funder requirements that the DMPTool maintains templates for.
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)
Community resource for tracking, comparing, and understanding current U.S. federal funder research data sharing policies.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Data Management and Sharing Policy
Requires NIH funded researchers to proactively plan for how scientific data will be preserved and shared through submission of a Data Management and Sharing Plan (effective date: January 25, 2023). Supplemental information includes: elements of a data management and sharing plan, allowable costs for data management and sharing and selecting a repository for data resulting from NIH-supported research.
Genomic Data Sharing Policy
To promote robust sharing of human and non-human data from a wide range of genomic research and to provide appropriate protections for research involving human data.
Other Sharing Policies
NIH has a variety of sharing policies addressing topics from model organisms to publications. Learn more about these policies and find out which apply to your research.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

Data Management Plan Requirements and Data Sharing Policy
Proposals must include a supplementary document of no more than two pages labeled "Data Management Plan." This supplementary document should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results.

Foundations/Organizations

This represents just a selection of foundations and organizations that have policies related to data.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI): Publishing and Sharing
Requires publications to contain sufficient information about their experimental methods and procedures, and make available data, software, and tangible research materials, to enable other scientists to reproduce and extend the results of all publications on which the HHMI laboratory head is an author.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Open Access Policy
Includes an Open Access policy that enables the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research funded, in whole or in part, by the foundation, including any underlying data sets.

Publisher & Journal Requirements

More and more journals are adopting the Joint Data Archiving Policy as shown below. Check the Instructions to Authors for details on how to handle associated data files before submitting a manuscript to any journal.

Examples of publishers that require data submission are Nature, Science, BMC, and PLOS.

Authors will often need to include in their article a statement detailing where the supporting data can be found (aka "Data Availability Statement"). Authors may be able to justify their reasons for not sharing.

Joint Data Archiving Policy - JDAP (PDF)
Describes a requirement that data supporting publications be publicly available.

JDAP consists of the following text:

[Journal] requires, as a condition for publication, that data supporting the results in the paper should be archived in an appropriate public archive, such as [list of approved archives here]. Data are important products of the scientific enterprise, and they should be preserved and usable for decades in the future. Authors may elect to have the data publicly available at time of publication, or, if the technology of the archive allows, may opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, especially for sensitive information such as human subject data or the location of endangered species.

Pitt-Specific Guidelines/Guidance

Research Data Management Interim Policy
This interim Policy establishes rules and requirements on how the University secures research-related data and other research records including its ownership, management, access, sharing, and retention.
Guidelines for the Responsible Conduct of Research (PDF)
Guidelines include a variety of topics including ownership and access to data, storage and retention of data, authorship and publication issues.
Genomic Data Sharing
Human Research Protection Office guidance including information about IRB Affirmation and consent language.