Managing Research Data: Budgeting

Budgeting for Data Management and Sharing

Many funding agencies allow researchers to include costs for data management and sharing in their budget proposal. After drafting the data management and sharing plan, you should have an idea of the tools, resources, and personnel needed for the proposed project. The funding agency website and/or solicitation should clarify allowable costs associated with data management and sharing. These allowable costs may include (but are not limited to):

Hardware, Software, and Other Computational Resources

There may be specific needs for data infrastructure during the project to accommodate data management and storage needs.

Learn more about OSU-specific resources and services related to storage and computing:

Data Storage and Security at OSU (PDF)
Data Check-Up from the OSU Libraries that outline data storage and security resources and services provide at OSU
OSU Data Stewardship Policy
Policy outlining data classification, responsibilities, and guidelines. Section 5.02 includes a regulated data chart with information on appropriate applications to store and send regulated data
OSU High Performance Computing Center
Information about OSU's high performance computing resources
OSU Data Center and Cloud Services
Information about OSU Enterprise Information Technology's resources and services relating to backups, data storage and transfer, and servers

Services and Personnel Dedicated to Data

There may specialized personnel or particular services required (or desired) related to the documentation and cleaning of data, re-formatting and other curation of data to meet community standards, de-identification of sensitive data (such as from research involving human participants), and metadata preparation.

Fees for Data Centers, Data Curation, and Repositories

Repositories may charge fees for things such as data curation, data deposit, or open access to the data. There may also be charges associated with increased storage needs for projects that produce a large volume of data that need to be shared.

The generalist data repository Dryad charges a $150 USD data publishing charge per submission that covers costs of data curation and preservation and charges a storage fee for data exceeding their 50GB default.
Social science researchers looking to deposit data in the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR) should budget for data curation services provided as part of the deposit process. Researchers can contact the ICPSR help email for a curation cost estimate to include in their grant proposal. Alternatively, researchers can publish in openICPSR for free, but data curation there is the responsibility of the researcher(s).

If your grant budget is tight, don't worry! Not all repositories charge you fees for depositing or making your data open access, so you won't necessarily incur costs associated with sharing your data in a data repository. The two repositories outlined below are more generalist (meaning they accept data from all disciplines) but there are also discipline-specific repositories that allow for free, open access data deposits.

Open Science Framework (OSF) is free by default, and public projects have a 50GB storage allotment. Storage needs beyond the 50GB threshold have costs based on the amount of additional storage needed, as outlined on OSF's storage tiers page.
Zenodo is also free to deposit in and provides storage for up to 50GB of data. Additional storage may be granted in some instances, but researchers should contact Zenodo with this request.

Don't forget: Allowable costs often must be incurred during the performance period, so you will need to plan ahead so that costs such as data deposit fees are paid before the end of the performance period.

You can learn more about allowable costs on websites for various funding agencies such as NSF and NIH.

Allowable cost suggestions sourced from NIH's page on Budgeting for Data Management and Sharing and the Other Direct Costs section of Chapter 2 of the NSF's Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide.

If you have specific questions about your data management and sharing plan or would like feedback on the plan's contents, contact Dr. Dani Kirsch, Research Data Services Librarian.