Let the ODC help you meet new NIH requirements for data management and sharing

On January 25, 2023, the new data management and sharing (DMS) policy of the NIH goes into effect. The new policy sets a clear expectation for researchers to “maximize appropriate sharing of scientific data”. After January 25, all NIH grant applications will have to include a DMS plan, that lays out how researchers plan how their scientific data will be preserved and shared. Investigators are expected to successfully execute their approved DMS plan as a condition of future funding. More information and helpful resources can be found on the NIH Data Sharing policy web portal.  

We at the Open Data Commons for Spinal Cord Injury (ODC-SCI) strongly support the new mandate and provide tools and services to help the preclinical TBI community not only comply with the mandates, but ensure their data are shared in a way that will maximize their impact on the field. If you are submitting a proposal for preclinical neurotrauma, consider using ODC standards and our data management and sharing platform while formulating and executing your DMS. We are here to help. How?

1. Use of domain-specific repositories. The policy “strongly encourages the use of established repositories,” that meet the criteria for scientific data repositories.
   
   NIH recommends that if you have a dedicated repository for sharing data in your field, you should use it over generalist or institutional repositories. Well, you do! The Open Data Commons for Spinal Cord Injury, ODC-SCI (odc-sci.org), has been in existence since 2018 for sharing of preclinical TBI and SCI data respectively. They comply with NIH and other requirements for trusted scientific data repositories and are community-owned and governed, allowing neurotrauma investigators to have a say in how data should be shared.  
   
   

2. Use of community standards. The policy asks researchers to state what data standards will be applied to the scientific data and associated metadata to enable interoperability of datasets and resources, and describe how these data standards will be applied to the scientific data generated by the research proposed in this project. 

ODC-SCI implements general and specific community standards such as issuing digital object identifiers for data sets, and supporting community recommendations for required and recommended common data elements (CDEs). We also support best practices for increasing the usability of your data such as providing data dictionaries, associated code and detailed experimental protocols. 

3. FAIR data quality assurance. We at ODC-SCI and TBI want data sharing to be impactful; we’re sure you do too. The NIH policy, therefore, requires that your data be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and “...of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings.”
   
   ODC-SCI was designed to support the major tenets of FAIR including the use of persistent identifiers, rich metadata, community standards and clear licenses.  ODC-SCI has implemented QA/QC tools so that you can check your data against best practices for data quality and assess conformance to recommended standards.  

We are following NIH recommendations closely and are preparing more detailed materials around the new NIH policy, including sample language that you will be able to use in your DMS plan. We also know that managing and sharing data takes time and effort, and are adapting a tool from the National Academies of Medicine, Engineering and Science to help you understand the costs involved so that you can budget accordingly. In the meanwhile, please feel free to contact us at  info@odc-sci.org (ODC-SCI) with any questions you may have when preparing your DMS plans.