Funder requirements and journal policies

Requirements and guidelines by funding agencies

Providing information on the handling of research data or a proper data management plan is not only proposed by more and more funding agencies or funding programs, but is also becoming a mandatory requirement.

While the German Research Foundation (DFG) has published general “Guidelines for the Handling of Research Data”, the requirements of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for research data management and plans may depend on the individual request for funding. At a European level and in English-speaking countries, a data management plan is often required.

• Overview of funder guidelines
• DFG guidelines for the handling of research data
  • Guide to completing the DFG checklist

Discipline-specific recommendations

Some scientific associations and professional scientific networks have published guidelines or recommendations for research data management. If these recommendations apply to your project, you may need to consider them in your grant application and in the data management plan, in particular to justify any divergences.

• Overview of domain-specific recommendations
• More recommendations in German

Journal policies

Some science publishers, e.g., Elsevier, SpringerNature and Wiley, have established their own data policies. Before collecting data, find out what demands publishers are making in order to be able to take these directly into account.

• Overview of publishing policies

Next: FAIR Data Principles