NIH Data Management and Sharing

NIH recognizes that making data accessible and reusable for other researchers may incur costs. Therefore, researchers may request funds toward data management and sharing in the budget and budget justification sections of their applications.

Costs That Are Allowed

Reasonable, allowable costs may be included in NIH budget requests for:

• Curating data
• Developing supporting documentation
• Formatting data according to accepted community standards, or for transmission to and storage at a selected repository for long-term preservation and access
• De-identifying data
• Preparing metadata to foster discoverability, interpretation, and reuse
• Local data management considerations, such as unique and specialized information infrastructure necessary to provide local management and preservation (for example, before deposit into an established repository).
• Preserving and sharing data through established repositories, such as data deposit fees.
  • If the Data Management & Sharing (DMS) plan proposes deposition to multiple repositories, costs associated with each proposed repository may be included.

Unallowable Costs

Budget requests must NOT include:

• Infrastructure costs that are included in institutional overhead  
• Costs associated with the routine conduct of research, including costs associated with collecting or gaining access to research data.
• Costs that are double charged or inconsistently charged as both direct and indirect costs

For more information about developing budgets for grant applications, check out the How to Apply – Application Guide.

On the proposed budget for data management and sharing, peer reviewers may provide comments on the reasonableness of the budget, but these comments will not impact the score.

Peer reviewers will only use the information found in the budget justification to determine whether the requested DMS costs are reasonable and will not be provided with the separate DMS Plan attachment (see NOT-OD-22-189).