NIH Data Management and Sharing

NEW - Recorded NIH Data Management Sharing Policy Training Session.

An update to the NIH data sharing policy of 2003 goes into effect January 25, 2023. Under the new policy, NIH expects investigators and institutions to

• Plan and budget for the managing and sharing of data
• Submit a data management and sharing (DMS) plan for review when applying for funding
• Comply with the approved DMS plan

Scientific Data

For the purposes of the policy, scientific data is "data commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications."

• Scientific data includes any data needed to validate and replicate research findings.
• Scientific data does not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, completed case report forms, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects such as laboratory specimens.

FAIR

While not in the policy itself, the FAIR data principles occur in some supporting documents and resources and are generally useful as a baseline for curating data for publication and preservation. The FAIR data principles state that data should be:

• Findable
• Accessible
• Interoperable
• Reusable