Data Management Planning in Biodata and Life Sciences: Sharing Is Caring

This workshop took place on 15 September 2026, from 16:30 to 18:00, as part of the Boosting Biodata Bootcamp, which ran from 15 to 17 September in Aachen.

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are an important tool for a successful Research Data Management because they help to ensure data integrity, reproducibility, and long-term accessibility. In addition, a Data Management Plan can serve as an interactive foundation for team collaboration throughout the project, helping to jointly manage measures and maintain an overview of data-related activities. During this workshop, three consortia (NFDI4Biodiversity, NFDI4Microbiota and FAIRagro) will present their DMP services in a hands-on session. After a general introduction to DMPs, participants will be able to join a breakout group for each of the consortia domains to test out the developed tools and create a DMP themselves. Afterwards, their experiences and requirements for future developments of the services will be discussed together. Here is a short description of the consortia and their DMP services in a nutshell: NFDI4Biodiversity, with a main focus on environmental, ecological and biodiversity data, has a data management service[1] that helps you create a DMP using the GFBio Data Management Plan Tool -DMPT[2] and provides you with support in preparing a state-of-the-art document. NFDI4Microbiota, which focuses primarily on microbial (omics) data, has a DMP template available on Zenodo, and offers support in filling it out. During this hands-on session, we will discuss DMP questions that require microbiology-specific answers, such as metadata schemas, file formats and data repositories. FAIRagro, the NFDI consortium for agrosystem research, provides a webservice based on the RDMO software and a template specialized for the needs of the agrosystem domain. It supports users by providing domain-specific answers, help texts and links to useful services, guiding them in their research data journey.

Target Audience: Researchers, Data Stewards, and Helpdesk Staff

What to bring: Notebook to try out DMP tools

Sources: [1] https://www.gfbio.org/plan/ [2] https://dmp.gfbio.org/