Before Research

At EPFL, the Library Research Data Management team is at your disposal to provide you with expert advice, support, and solutions. This page offers tips and tools, best practices, and funders / institutional guidelines for planning your data management. In addition, a dedicated service is in place to assist you in preparing your Data Management Plan (DMP) or to support EPFL’s funders for DMP reviews. 

Good Research Data Management practices allow researchers to:

• Save time and duplication of effort, facilitating the re-use of data and guaranteeing their integrity by preventing them from becoming lost or corrupted;
• Increase efficiency and impact of the research with good practices in use, dissemination, and sharing;
• Ensure compliance with obligations and policies on data protection and security;
• Ensure that the data produced are FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).
• Reduce the carbon footprint of storage and computational resources.

Fast Guide #1 | RDM basics  Fast Guide #3 | Cost of RDM

The DMP is a document that plans the life cycle of the data: it offers a long-term perspective by outlining how data will be generated, collected, documented, shared, and preserved in the long run, consistently with the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reproducibility) principles (for more information on FAIR data at EPFL, see also here).
In a DMP, researchers describe their data (e.g. with metadata, naming conventions, formats, licenses, data collections…) as clearly as possible, in order to be able to re-use them and share them in the future.

If you manage or are involved in more than one project under the same umbrella (research groups, consortia, NCCR…), it is beneficial to establish an RDM strategy: it provides a roadmap for all the members to understand roles and responsibilities, and defines tools and standards for overall data management.

 Useful tools  Fast Guide #2 | FAIR  Fast Guide #11 | DMP

EPFL DMP

SNSF DMP (EPFL-tailored guidance)

SNSF DMP (simple template)

ERC DMP

H2020 DMP

MSCA DMP (also Horizon Europe H2021-2027)

EPFL RDM Strategy

NIH DMS

The following resources will help you stay compliant with research funders, as well as with EPFL own policies and guidelines for data management.

The Library Research Data Management team is at your disposal to guide you through and review your DMPs. You can download here below the DMP templates for different research funders, to ease your DMP submission and follow-up. If you are an EPFL faculty or central service, the RDM team can assist you in reviewing your applicants’ DMPs.