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Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR) AIHR

Before the research

Data Management Plan

Research Management Services (RMS) is the central place to manage your research project. The system assists you in taking all important steps to prepare and plan your research project, such as drawing up a data management plan and submitting an application for Ethics Review.

Data management plan

Before starting a new research project, the researcher draws up a data management plan (DMP). In the DMP, the researcher specifies what kind of data will be collected, how it is collected, stored and processed. The researcher also indicates how the data is going to be shared, archived and published. For externally funded projects, such as by NWO and the EU, the DMP can be a strict requirement to be able to start with the project.

What do you gain by drawing up a DMP?

  • Plan on how to organise the project’s research data. This leads to a better overview and higher findability of data during the research.
  • Ensuring safe storage of research data. This prevents loss and unauthorised access to the research data.
  • Planning archiving and publishing of research data from the start of your project. This makes it easier and less time-consuming to actually execute the archiving and publication process in the end of the project.

After you have submitted your DMP through RMS, the faculty’s data steward will provide feedback on it. The data steward is also available for consultation during the process of drawing up the DMP in RMS.

Go to Research Management Services to draw up your DMP before the start of your research. This portal contains the UvA’s DMP template which is also approved by NWO. If you need a DMP for another funding body, you may use DMPonline which contains various templates of various funding bodies. Both systems can be used with your UvA ID and allow you to share your DMP with the data steward of your faculty, receive feedback on it and download the plan.

Approval of the Ethics Committee

Some research projects work with human participants, using questionnaires, interviews, experiments or observations to obtain research data. Working with participants in most cases leads to the collection and processing of personal data. Personal data is any kind of data that can be traced back to a natural person.

If personal data is collected and processed, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies. The GDPR is EU legislation on data protection and privacy aimed to protect people with regard to the processing of their personal data.

When working with participants and/or personal data, the project needs approval from the Faculty’s Ethics Committee before the research starts. To register your project for an ethics review go to Research Management Services. Before submitting an application, carefully read the information on the website of the Ethics Committee.

In short, for the collection and processing of personal data informed consent from the participants is necessary. The data collected should be minimised, meaning that you only collect personal data which is strictly necessary to accomplish the research goals. Personal data should be stored encrypted, on UvA storage, and only kept for as long as it is necessary for its purpose. When publishing data, personal data needs to be anonymised or if that is not possible pseudonymised. For more details on how to work with personal data in research you can download the Instructions on Ethics and GDPR by using the link below.