Office of Clinical Research

Beginning on January 25, 2023, ALL grant applications or renewals that generate Scientific Data must include a detailed plan for managing and sharing data through the entire funded period with plans for data dissemination. You must provide this information in a Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP). In addition, once the award is made and plan approved, compliance with the DMSP will be a determining condition of the work, meaning it can impact future funding decisions.

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The NIH is emphasizing good data stewardship with the goals of advancing rigorous and reproducible research and promoting public trust in scientific endeavors. 

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Scientific Data are "the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications. Scientific data do not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, completed case report forms, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens."

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The policy encourages efforts to maximize appropriate sharing, but recognizes exceptions (i.e., legal, ethical, or technical reasons). These reasons must be communicated in the NIH DMSP.  In addition, sharing plans must be communicated in informed consent documents. In the end, ALL data must be managed, even if not all data can be shared.

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