From planning to implementation: Data management in real-time research

Since October 2017 Switzerland's main science funder, the Swiss National Science Foundation (FORS), requires a data management plan to be submitted along with research proposals. The announcement came as a small tsunami in the research community, with many researchers not trained in data management or comfortable with the concept of data sharing. This is particularly true for qualitative methodologies, which have generally not contributed much to the sharing culture in Switzerland. As a way to catch the next wave, FORS began a reflection some two years ago on how to best implement data management plans in practice. Drawing from researchers' considerations resulting from the new DMP policy, but also from a pilot study we are currently conducting with researchers to examine day-to-day data management issues, in this presentation we suggest a new planning model -- one that addresses funders' requirements but that also guides researchers through the concrete application of data management practices. Our model addresses how original plans should be elaborated and rendered into practice, moving beyond the usual end goal of data sharing, in order to address the immediate data management needs of researchers and their teams.