Stamp—Standardized Data Management Plan for Educational Research: A Blueprint to Improve Data Management across Disciplines

To provide more tailored, discipline-specific guidance on data management, Science Europe suggested the concept of domain data protocols. Based on this concept, the project Domain Data Protocols for Educational Research developed a first domain data protocol for educational research, titled Standardized Data Management Plan for Educational Research (Stamp). Its multi-level approach includes minimal conditions on managing data according to the FAIR Data Principles and checklists with concrete activities to reach each minimal condition; also included are auxiliary materials to support researchers in educational research in planning, implementing, and realizing different data management activities. Although we developed the Stamp for educational research, its design and flexible structure enables transferring it to other (research) domains and communities. To investigate this flexibility, we organized two workshops, discussing to what extent the Stamp can be used beyond educational research, with representatives from other social science domains as well as from research domains beyond the social sciences. In sum, there was consensus among participants of both workshops on the usability of the Stamp outside educational research, at least if the same types of data are processed and analyzed with similar methods. For other types of data, the Stamp serves as a blueprint to develop further domain data protocols, in terms of standardized data management plans, according to the specific needs of the respective domain. Keywords: (research) data management, data management plans, domain data protocols, discipline-specific guidance, standardization, cross-disciplinary data management