Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The NSF-GEO DMP template encoded in DMPRoadmap with sections for data description, metadata, access, and re-use.
- Is an instance
An institutional template extending the Horizon Europe template with local storage-service guidance.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A blank Word document.
- Not an instance
An RDA Common Standard JSON schema (defines structure of the output, not the elicitation questions).
Editorial commentary
A DMP template is a funder-, institution-, or community-specific structured set of questions and guidance used to elicit the content of a Data Management Plan (DMP) from a researcher. Templates organise the topics a plan needs to cover — data description, FAIR-enabling practices, ethical and legal constraints, storage, preservation, sharing, and responsibilities are common sections — into a consistent question structure. Because DMP tools such as DMPRoadmap and DMPonline encode templates as data rather than hard-coded forms, the same underlying question can be presented under an NIH label in one context and a Horizon Europe label in another, with the researcher’s answers exported into whichever structure the funder actually requires.
A research office deals with templates constantly, usually by selecting the correct one for a given funder inside an institutional DMP tool, or by maintaining a local institutional template that layers extra guidance (which internal repository to name, which storage tiers are available) on top of a funder’s base requirements. Choosing the wrong template — for example, using a generic institutional form for an application that requires the funder’s specific structure — is one of the more common avoidable errors a research office catches at review stage.
How it differs from adjacent DMP concepts
- vs. DMP narrative — the template is the question set; the narrative is the answers written out in prose.
- vs. RDA DMP Common Standard — the standard defines the structure of a machine-actionable output; a template defines the questions used to elicit content, and the two are related but not the same layer.
References
- Digital Curation Centre DMPonline funder templates library; Horizon Europe DMP template (European Commission).
Also known as
DMP questionnaire · DMP form
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="DMP template"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-template" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-template",
"name": "DMP template",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-template",
"description": "A funder-, institution-, or community-specific structured set of questions and guidance used to elicit the content of a Data Management Plan from researchers.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/machine-actionable-dmps#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/dmp-template",
"sameAs": [
"DMP questionnaire",
"DMP form"
],
"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": "2026-08-22T14:11:41",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
