In the Moment Costs: A Longitudinal Study of Data Management & Sharing

Despite the growing importance of including data management and sharing costs in research budgets, estimating these specific costs remains difficult. Many grants submitted to the US National Institute of Health (NIH) since the 2023 Data Management and Sharing Policy included $0 or no specification of data management and sharing costs, despite specific guidelines to include them. Previous research conducted by the Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) initiative provided initial estimates of these costs based on a retroactive survey of researchers who completed grants with data sharing requirements within the last decade. However, specific financial information was difficult for many participants to recall, and further refinement and assessment of data management and sharing costs are needed. This presentation will describe follow up research being done by the RADS initiative to refine these estimates. In this project, three faculty who were awarded grants under the 2023 NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy are followed and surveyed longitudinally throughout their project. We will present results from the first four meetings, which aligns with approximate half way through each grant. Of the projects included, none included a specific budget for data management and sharing in their grant applications. However, after two meetings and a year and half into the grants, PIs reported both themselves and their collaborators doing data management activities and spending between 4 and 1200 hours on data management and sharing activities, with an average cost of $46,000 in time alone.