Pathways to Data: From Plans to Datasets

Abstract

What is the relationship between Data Management Plans (DMPs), DMP guidance documents, and the reality of end-of-project data preservation and access? In this short paper we report on some preliminary findings of a 3-year investigation into the impact of DMPs on federally funded science in the United States. We investigated a small sample of publicly accessible DMPs (N=14) published using DMPTool. We found that while DMPs followed the National Science Foundation's guidelines, the pathways to the resulting research data are often obscure, vague, or not obvious. We define two “data pathways” as the search tactics and strategies deployed in order to find datasets.