NIH Data Management and Sharing Guide: NIH DMSP Budgeting and Costing Questions for Researchers

The following questions may be useful to you, the researcher, in determining what data management and sharing costs to budget for in your proposal for NIH funding and in meeting the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy.

These questions originate from the COGR Readiness Guide - Chapter 4 Part II - Budgeting and Costing: Project-Based and Institutional Cost Considerations.

If you have further questions this budgeting and costing information for your proposal, contact dataservices@vt.edu and osp@vt.edu.

Questions

1. Is there a deposit fee for any of the repositories you plan to use?
2. Will you need dedicated personnel time to support data management and sharing activities to meet repository requirements? If not personnel time, will you need to engage the services of a core or vendor to complete tasks such as the following:
   • Data curation?
   • Developing supporting documentation?
   • Formatting data according to accepted community standards or for transmission and storage at a selected repository?
   • Preparing metadata?
   • De-identifying data (including data that may require more expensive methodologies to satisfy deidentification requirements for NIH)?
3. Where are you planning to store the data while the project is active? Is there an associated fee?
4. Is there a fee associated with any tools or software you plan to use to collect or analyze the data?
5. Do you have subrecipients?
   • If yes, will they be responsible and need funds for data management and sharing activities? Will the data be sent to the prime and combined into a single data set, and will the prime deposit the data or the subrecipient?
   • Discussions should occur with subrecipients to discuss who is paying for what costs related to DMS and to make sure the costs to manage the subrecipients' data are included in the proposal budget (but only once for each data set).
   • How do the overall costs for the subrecipient to manage DMS align with the budget and details outlined in the DMS Plan?
6. How will budgets submitted with $0 for DMS costs be managed and verified to ensure there truly are no associated costs with the proposed DMS Plan to the researcher or institution?
7. Consider local data management considerations, such as unique and specialized information infrastructure necessary to provide local management and preservation (for example, before deposit into an established repository).
8. During the initial year of implementation, be prepared to address any requested modifications/revisions during Just-In-Time. Consider if changes impact the budget. This should also be considered for progress reports/RPPR.