Data Management Plan

The Data Management Plan describes the data management life cyclefor all data sets that will be collected processed or generated by the action It is adocument describing what data will be collected processed or generated andfollowing what methodology and standards whether and how this data will beshared andor made open and how it will be curated and preservedOpen science practicesMaastricht University strongly supports the Open Science movement and of course so does the MERLN Institute By increasing transparency and enabling access to important knowledge scientific progress can be improved in both quality and speed while providing fair and equal access to important sources of scientific data MERLN has an Open Science strategy that encompasses the followingPublish in Open Access journals as much as possible in 2021 more than 90 of our papers were Open Access using the least restrictive copyright licenses eg Creative Commons BY This ensures equal access to researchers all over the worldIncreasingly publish our research data sets alongside papers These data sets are deposited in trusted online repositories such as DataverseNLStimulate the use of electronic lab notebooks ELNs that follow the FAIR principles of Findability Accessibility Interoperability and Reusability All new employees are introduced to the ELN in a mandatory workshopDeposit all data in Maastricht Universitys internal Maastricht Data Repository MDR developed by DataHub MDR also follows the FAIR guidelines and ensures secure longterm storage on internal servers Data sets deposited in MDR are not accessible outside our University which makes it an excellent solution to store GDPRsensitive data Data that can be shared are deposited in public repositories see second point aboveMoreover MERLN has a dedicated data steward Dr Dennie Hebels who also serves as our facultys representative in the Open Science Community Maastricht This community is part of an expanding international network of Open Science communities that exchange best practices and advice each other on strategies to promote Open Science in all research fieldsResearch data management and management of other research outputsData management at the MERLN institute comprises several different aspectsCollection An ELN Microsoft OneNote is used throughout the experiment lifecycle from experiment planning to data analysis Moreover during data collection there is always a strong focus on commonly used file formats The ELN strategy was developed using the FAIR principles as a guideline All experiment data in the ELN are accompanied by substantive metadata Metadata will describe how the data were collected experiment conditions and settings described in Standard Operating Procedures SOPs and processed softwarecode Each set will have at least title date of creation creators description SOPs and if applicable dataspecific information Experiments are all uniquely coded and this clear and consistent classification of experiments is also applied to the folder structure and filenames that contain the experiment data ensuring that all raw and processes data belonging to an experiment can always be found unambiguously This ensures a high level of findability interoperability and reusabilityShortterm storageDigital raw and processed experiment data are stored on passwordprotected and encrypted laptops that undergo daily backups to secure internal servers In case of very large data sets data are also stored directly on these servers The servers themselves have multiple backups in place as well to prevent data loss Our local ICT department provides any necessary server maintenance and support Biological samples are all stored in laboratory storage units with appropriate storage conditions eg liquid nitrogen 3080 freezers refrigerators etc Support and expertise for this equipment i