What you should know about the new 2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy
Starting January 25th, 2023, the NIH will implement a new policy that requires new grant applications or renewals that generate scientific data to include a detailed data management and sharing plan. The NIH expects all shareable data to be made available, whether it is associated with a publication or not. The goals of this new policy are to establish the expectation for the management and sharing of scientific data generated from NIH-funded or conducted research, and to emphasize the importance of good data management practices.
We have a set of template materials developed in partnership with Fred Hutch Shared Resources and other groups on campus and investigators that can be a valuable resource when first writing a data sharing plan. You can find those materials on our NIH data sharing project page. Also, you can learn more about “FAIR” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data sharing principles at the FAIRSharing site which has a catalogue of data preservation, management and sharing policies form international funding agencies, regulators and journals and a lot of other information about data standards.
In response to this new, expanded scope of data sharing requirements as well as from other funding agencies, the Data Science Lab has begun customizing dmptool.org for Fred Hutch investigators. You can learn more about this free tool on our dmptool page.
The Data Science Lab has also created a guide you can find here that walks you through the process of complying with the new 2023 NIH Data Sharing Policy.
If you take this course and want to give us feedback or would like to learn more about it, you can share your thoughts in the FH Data Slack in the #ask-dasl channel) or you can file an issue on the course’s GitHub repository or email us at
data@fredhutch.org.
Fred Hutch staff can always schedule a “Study Planning, Data Sharing and Grants” Data House Call with the Data Science Lab for a quick consultation about your specific project.
Why is the NIH doing this? There are several reasons why sharing data can be beneficial to the scientific community.
The major requirement of the policy is that all grant proposals (submitted after January 25th, 2023) for mechanisms that require compliance, must include a plan for how they will manage and share their data.
For certain grant mechanisms for projects that do not generate data, compliance with the policy is not required. For certain types of data, sharing is not possible, and a justification will be required instead.
What grant mechanisms require compliance with the DMS policy?
The DMS Policy applies to all research that generates scientific data, including:
The DMS Policy does not apply to research and other activities that do not generate scientific data, including:
To determine if your research requires compliance with other policies that may influence how you share your data, take this quiz.
Does my research generate scientific data?
The NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy applies to all NIH-supported research generating scientific data. But what is considered “scientific data”?
Scientific data are the “recorded factual material of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications”. This can include any of the following if they are applicable to your study:
You are not expected to share:
We outline these essential components in more depth in our DaSL developed resources described below, however there are 6 elements that will be required in your data management plan.