Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 'dmp.json' file exported from DMPonline conforming to RDA DMP CS v1.1.
- Is an instance
A JSON-LD representation that links dataset entities to DOIs and contributors to ORCID iDs.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A scanned image of a DMP form (not machine-parseable).
- Not an instance
A free-text answer field within an otherwise structured form.
Editorial commentary
A DMP machine-readable expression is the structured serialisation of a Data Management Plan (DMP)‘s content — typically JSON, JSON-LD, or XML — in a form that conforming software can parse, validate, and act on without a person re-reading and re-interpreting the prose. Where a narrative communicates intent to a human reviewer, the machine-readable expression communicates the same decisions to other systems: a repository that pre-populates a deposit form from the plan, a compliance dashboard that flags a missing field, a funder portal that ingests the plan directly rather than parsing free text.
The RDA DMP Common Standard is the most widely adopted schema for this expression, and it is what tools such as DMPRoadmap, Argos, DataDMP, and ezDMP export to under the hood. A research office is most likely to encounter a machine-readable expression as an export option (“download as JSON”) in a DMP tool, or as the format a repository or CRIS system expects when a plan is linked programmatically rather than pasted in as text.
How it differs from adjacent DMP concepts
- vs. maDMP — the machine-readable expression is the artefact (the file); a maDMP is the broader concept of a plan that is authored, maintained, and consumed in that machine-actionable way.
- vs. DMP RDA-JSON-LD — RDA-JSON-LD is one specific, linked-data flavour of machine-readable expression; plain RDA Common Standard JSON without a JSON-LD context is machine-readable but not linked data.
References
- RDA DMP Common Standards Working Group outputs.
Also known as
structured DMP · DMP JSON · DMP serialisation
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="DMP machine-readable expression"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-machine-readable-expression" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-machine-readable-expression",
"name": "DMP machine-readable expression",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-machine-readable-expression",
"description": "The structured serialisation of a DMP's content in a format (JSON, JSON-LD, XML) that conforming software can parse, validate, and act upon without human re-interpretation.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/machine-actionable-dmps#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-machine-readable-expression",
"sameAs": [
"structured DMP",
"DMP JSON",
"DMP serialisation"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:48",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T14:11:35",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
