Research data management requirements of the Wageningen Graduate Schools

The WUR data policy requires all PhD candidates to write a data management plan within six months of starting their PhD. Additionally, within the project proposals of the Wageningen Graduate Schools (WGS) a data management section may be present, which is related to the more detailed data management plan.

Data management plan

In a data management plan, various aspects of data management during and after the research project are described. Find more information, tips and the WUR data management plan template here.

Data management section

A part of the external review process of the project proposal is the assessment of the data management section. PhD candidates have to describe and declare in their project proposal that they will manage research data according to the WUR data policy. The data management section in the Wageningen Graduate Schools project proposal templates, with the exception of VLAG, must encompass a description of:

  • Data storage: both short term and long term.
  • Data ownership: issues with respect to ownership of data produced in this project or external data used for this project.
  • Data sharing: agreement on who will have access to and use the (un)published data.
  • Data management: who will be responsible for the data management after finalisation of your PhD.

This section may include references to the more detailed data management plan (see above) and can also refer to the data management protocol (i.e. at the level of a research group). Note that the data management plan does not need to be included in the project proposal, but can be added as an appendix.

Project proposal templates including the data management section per WGS

The PhD project proposal template per Graduate School can be found below.

Support

For PhD candidates and postdocs, the WGS offer a Research Data Management course which is organised by WUR Library and given four times a year. This course covers the data management topics that are covered in a data management plan. If you have questions or if you would like to get feedback on your data management plan, contact data@wur.nl.