Disciplinary Data Management Plans That Can Be Used as Examples

RDA France, the French chapter of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), established the RDA France – Disciplinary Data Management Plans (DMPs) Working Group in March 2023. The objective was to create a corpus of disciplinary DMPs that can be used as examples.

This Regional Output is Version 1 of the list of disciplinary DMPs resulting from the working group’s efforts, accompanied by a report explaining the reasons why the group was created and how it was formed, the methodology used to develop the corpus and its content in terms of data and metadata. It was initially published in July 2025. An English translation of the report was added in May 2026 in support to the submission of this Regional Output.

The provision of a DMP is increasingly required by national and international funding agencies for the projects they support. Those responsible for helping researchers share their data observe that researchers often view the obligation to produce a DMP as an administrative constraint rather than a useful tool for managing their project and its data, which requires their effective participation in its preparation and maintenance. This observation led members of the RDA France community to propose and organise a workshop in March 2022 titled “Bringing Scientists into the Process of Developing Data Management Plans” (RDA France Wiki). The workshop was open to all individuals interested or involved in the DMP challenge. Participants shared their questions, reflections, feedback, and suggestions. The goal was to collectively and openly reflect on how to effectively engage scientists.

The numerous contributions from the workshop participants are compiled in Deboin et al. (2022, DOI: 10.18167/agritrop/00587), with a summary provided on the RDA France web space – the two documents are in French. They led to ideas that could be implemented to facilitate researchers’ appropriation of the DMP development process. Among the participants’ suggestions for improving the situation, the
need for “models and examples” was noted.

It appears necessary to consider the diversity of disciplinary cultures and practices to identify relevant examples for a given discipline. The creation of the RDA France Working Group on Disciplinary DMPs followed a suggestion from a community member, which led to a call for expressions of interest to participate in a group on the subject if it were created. The strong interest expressed in response to this call led to the establishment of the working group in March 2023. The working group consists of experts who were recruited on a voluntary basis. Most members hold positions supporting researchers in sharing their data.

Citation

– of the corpus: Genova, Françoise; Cosserat, Françoise; Bage, Anne-Sophie; Guiffant, Nadia; Lafosse, Yvette; Liéby, Paulette; Locatelli, Lauriane; Papin, Elodie; Busin, Anne; Cecconi, Baptiste; Clédat, Aurélie; Courbin-Coulaud , Martine; Crépieux, Simon; Davis, Gemma; Duteille, Cécile; Hénon, Amandine; Le Tellier-Becquart, Nathalie; Pellerin, Karine; Rassinoux, Laurent; Sébire, Fanny; Beligné, Max; Benoit, Céline; Bernier, Mathilde; Boulland, Florian; Chergui, Myriam; Filoche, Francine; Li, Ling; Marini ,Jérôme; Marlet, Olivier; Moré, Simon; Ounsy, Majid; Sudre, Joël; Debisschop, Laura, 2025, “Corpus de Plans de Gestion de Données disciplinaires pouvant être utilisés comme exemple”, https://doi.org/10.57745/ZSWLYJ, Recherche Data Gouv, V2

– of the associated report: Françoise Genova, Françoise Cosserat, Anne-Sophie Bage, Nadia Guiffant, Yvette Lafosse, et al.. Analyse et identification de Plans de Gestion de Données disciplinaires pouvant être utilisés comme exemple/Analysis and identification of disciplinary Data Management Plans which can be used as examples. Research Data Alliance France (RDA France). 2025. https://hal.science/hal-05187206