NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy FAQ

No. Submission in the Data Safety Application is not equivalent to the DMSP required by the NIH. A DMSP is required for any proposal involving Scientific Data and includes six sections, each with specific requirements associated with the Data. The submitted DMSP will be assessed by peers and NIH administrators, and will directly impact whether the proposal is accepted.

The Data Safety Application is an internal system for routing and recording Harvard researchers’ data security plans. Researchers are only required to submit a request in the Data Safety Application if their scope of work involves Sensitive Research Data (Harvard Data Security Level (DSL) 3 or above), a Data Use Agreement, or as otherwise described in the Research Data Security Policy. If the proposal is successful, and Sensitive Research Data is implicated, the Principal Investigator must submit a request in the Safety Application, and upload the DMSP as part of the request, so the cognizant security reviewer and other research team members are aware of the immediate and long-term expectations for the data. The Research Support site has additional information on the Data Safety review processes. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your School Security Officer with specific questions.