Have your project been recently awarded a grant? Or you are planning to recruit participants or collect personal data for your study? Then there are several things you need to take care of before you can start. To make sure you are ready with everything on time, please follow the timeline below to meet all important deadlines.
Data Paragraph
At the proposal stage, you need to write a section on RDM in the application form, called a data paragraph, in which you describe concisely how you will handle, store, and archive your research data. Often, a data paragraph needs to be reviewed by a data specialist. If you need help with your data paragraph, please contact a Data Steward at least a week before your proposal deadline.
Data Management Plan
After your proposal has been awarded funding, you should draft the first version of the DMP. In general, DMP needs to be completed within 4-6 months after awarding the project, based on funder requirements.
A funder-approved DMP is often a requirement to obtain the first round of funding for a research project. Not writing the DMP or a rejected DMP may delay the start of your research project or receiving the funds. The Data Stewards of RDM support can help you by reviewing, co-writing, and/or providing feedback on your DMP.
If you need help with writing your DMP, contact rdmsupport@tue.nl. Please aim to contact us at least 2 weeks before the deadline, and in the case of a big Consortium at least a month before the DMP needs to be submitted.
Finally, please be aware that the alignment between all Parties in a Consortium on the data is not a Data Steward's responsibility.
Ethical Review Board approval
At TU/e everyone (including students) must register their research with human participants and ask for ethical approval. If you receive data sets (containing personal data) from collaborators outside the TU/e, you also need to ask for ethical approval for secondary data processing. The ERB takes two to six weeks to review your application based on the risk levels (low, medium, and high-risk studies) and inform you about their decision.
If you want to make sure your application is processed on time, submit it six weeks before you would like to start data collection. Additionally, if you need support from the Data Stewards team in completing your application, please contact us preferably one week (a low-risk study) or two weeks (a high-risk study) before you submit your application to the ERB.
Note that for high risk studies, you may need to complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) with a help of a Data Steward and a Privacy Officer. A DPIA has to receive a positive advice from the DPO before data collection and processing can start. The DPIA process can take four to six weeks and can be done in parallel to the ERB process. Please take this timeline into account when contacting the Data Stewards team for support.