In March 2021, the federal funding agencies (SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR) published a policy on research data management. Members of the research community are invited to take these three elements of the policy into consideration:
- Institutional Strategies: By March 1, 2023, the University must post its research data management strategy and notify the agencies when it has been completed.
- Data Management Plans: By spring 2022, data management plans will gradually become a requirement for grant applications. This new requirement will be applied by program.
- Data Deposit: After reviewing the institutional strategies and in line with the readiness of the Canadian research community after the spring of 2023, the agencies will phase in the deposit requirement. Please note that certain agencies outside of Canada, as well as some scholarly journals, already require the submission of data underlying the conclusions of a scholarly publication.
When must a management plan be created?
- The data management plan must be created at the start of the research project so that it can, if necessary, be presented to the Ethics Committee for Research Involving Humans or when the grant application is submitted.
- The plan must cover all stages in the lifecycle of a research project, from inception to dissemination and use of results.
What are the obligations?
- Research data must be managed in accordance with ethical, legal, and commercial obligations.
- All data must be managed, but it is not necessary for all of it to be shared or preserved if it is not considered informative and of appropriate quality, or to comply with the terms of partnership contracts, privacy protection, or ethical rules.
Standards and best practices
- Data must be managed in accordance with the most appropriate and relevant standards and best practices. To find out more, see Data Management Plan.
Software and formats
- Data must be collected and stored using secure software and formats that allow access over several years. We strongly recommend documenting the name and version number of the software used, e.g. "Microsoft Word for Mac, version 16.45," "R version 4.0.3," "IBM SPSS Modeler 15.0," etc.
Quality of metadata
- Research data must be accompanied by high-quality metadata that enables and facilitates access, use by the research team, and reuse by future users.
Access and confidentiality
- Data must be preserved on a platform that is publicly accessible, secure, and structured, while ensuring the protection of confidential information.
- Data should be shared as soon as possible, but reasonable exclusions may be permitted for a limited period of time.
Source and conditions of use
- The source of the data must be made explicit by all users of research data, who must also comply with the conditions of use.
