Organizing, Protecting, and Sharing your PEER Research Data Data Management We want PEER scientists to be excellent research data managers, which means they take great care of the data produced under USAID awards. The end result of taking great care of that data is sharing the data and getting credit for all this great research work. We want to make sure that PEER research data are of sufficient quality, understandable, and include all the necessary information for re-use. We also want to make sure your data is stored safely, will be preserved over time, and that you can get full credit for the knowledge you generate through your project. A data management plan will help you manage research data throughout the life of the project. Please see the Guide for Creating a PEER Data Management Plan for step by step instructions. Data Sharing Sharing data makes science cheaper and more efficient. Researchers can benefit from data that has already been collected and not spend time and money re-creating work that has already been done. Instead, they can simply give credit to the researcher who collected the data, and use it to make new scientific advances. USAID’s Public Access Plan describes how research funded by the US government should be accessible to the public whenever possible. For PEER scientists, this means sharing the data collected during research funded by USAID. The final product of research is often thought to be the journal article that tells a story about the data that was collected. However, scientists are beginning to see the data as the research product. The journal article is now seen as just one of many possible analyses of the data. The PEER program recognizes the importance of data and requires that awardees store data in a digital repository and share that data whenever possible. Steps for PEER Data Management and Sharing: Choose a repository for your data. You should select this by the end of year 1 of your PEER project. We recommend collaborating closely with your US partner on this. For social science and public health research, we suggest using the USAID Development Data Library (DDL): https://www.usaid.gov/data. For other types of research, you can start looking for repositories heres: https://www.coretrustseal.org/why-certification/certified-repositories/, http://www.sciencemag.org/authors/science-editorial-policies#data-deposition, and https://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories.  Create a short data management plan in the PEER grant management system, Foundant. This must be completed by the end of year 1 of your PEER award. This is required for Cycle 6 and later. Submit data to a repository. When you publish, you should at the same time submit your data to the DDL, or submit data to an acceptable third-party repository and link that to the DDL. The data can be embargoed, or stored privately, for up to 12 months. Upload publications to USAID’s document platform. Author’s manuscripts should be sent to the Development Experience Clearinghouse (DEC). This should be done the final year of your PEER award. For a detailed guide to PEER data management concepts, please see the PEER development data overview.   Webinar Powerpoint Webinar PDF Webinar Recording Frequently Asked Questions