eCommons and SelectedWorks

As of October 2015, data management plans are required with grant proposals in many federal agencies, and federal awards made in January 2016 and beyond require the public sharing of research data for the long term.

The University Libraries can assist faculty in meeting federal requirements for the public digital access of scientific data gathered as part of federally funded research. Research faculty can provide consultation on data management plans, data curation, and selection of data repositories (among which eCommons is an option). 

Data-sharing compliance considerations include:

• Open access
• Discovery and immediate availability of data and documentation
• Appropriate metadata generated with a persistent URL (DOl)
• Data preserved for the long term
• Effort to make restricted-use/sensitive data available to the public

For more information, consult your liaison librarian or see the University Libraries' research guide on data management.

Some handy resources:

• Federal agencies, institutes, and departments are gradually providing more guidance on their requirements for data management. This "community-sourced" spreadsheet, populated by academic librarians at several research institutions, provides a listing of agencies and the guidelines they have provided.
• UD community members have access to the California Digital Library's Data Management Planning Tool, which provides samples of data plans as well as data management requirements from many federal research funders.
• Columbia University presents similar information in its research guide on public access mandates.
• Here's a similar resource from SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition; it's an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.