Budgeting for Research Data Management

The NIH acknowledges that sharing datasets can add an extra financial burden on the researcher. To offset these costs, grant applicants can request funding to offset costs for data management, sharing, and archiving. The funding must be spent before the end of the performance period.

Allowable costs include:

• Data curation
• Developing supporting documentation
• Formatting data to community standards or for transmission to and storage at a selected repository for long-term preservation and access
• De-identifying data
• Metadata preparation for discoverability, interpretation, and reuse
• Local data management considerations, like 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 (like deposit fees)

Non-allowable costs include:

• Infrastructure costs that are included in institutional overhead (for instance, Facilities and Administrative costs)
• 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