Introduction

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

• Supplemental Information to the NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing: Allowable Costs for Data Management and Sharing: Outlines that reasonable, allowable costs can be budgeted in three categories: (1) curating data and developing supporting documentation; (2) local data management considerations; and (3) preserving and sharing data through established repositories.

Allowable Costs

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 DMS Plan proposes deposition to multiple repositories, costs associated with each proposed repository may be included.

Note: All allowable costs submitted in budget requests must be incurred during the performance period, even for scientific data and metadata preserved and shared beyond the award period. 

Unallowable Costs

Budget requests must NOT 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

Cost Estimation Resources

• NAP on biomedical data costs: Video walkthrough of the cost template

  This video will walk you through the National Academies' cost driver template, to show you how to use the cost driver template to estimate your own (biomedical) data sharing costs.

• NAP on biomedical data costs: The complete study report

  Takes you to the full National Academies' site on Forecasting Costs for Preserving, Archiving, and Promoting Access to Biomedical Data. Includes the consensus study report, Life-Cycle Decisions for Biomedical Data: The Challenge of Forecasting Costs. Downloadable in PDF format for free. Several related tools and videos are linked in the "resources" section.

• NAP on biomedical data costs: A checklist for administrators

  A generalized checklist of things to consider, drawn from the larger National Academies report

• NAP on biomedical data costs: Workbook direct download

  Use this link to download the National Academies workbook on cost drivers for data management and sharing. Downloads in MS Word (.doc) file format.

• NIMH Data Archive (NDA) Data Submission Cost Estimation Tool

  Estimator for costs in data preparation and deposit work with NDA: the NIMH Data Archive. This also applies to NIAAA and NIDA deposits in the NDA, NIAAA-da, and related repositories.