The Federal Demonstration Partnership Template Pilot: a Community Response to NIH’s “New” Data Management and Sharing Policy 

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Towards the end of January 2023, NIH’s new Data Management and Sharing Policy (DMSP) went into effect. Among the key provisions for this policy was the requirement for including a Data Management Plan (DMP) for most types of grant applications, regardless of the award request. A DMP asks researchers to identify the types of data they expect to produce from their project, where that data will be stored, and what provisions will be made for sharing the data. You can read more about the NIH DMSP here. 

Preparation and work from the NIH, the MSK Library, other institutional libraries, and research administrators have gone into creating resources in support of this policy roll-out, including an NIH Data Sharing website, templates in the DMPTool, and a resource guide at MSK. Those vested in supporting NIH-funded researchers and the policy will continue to enhance workflows and provide guidance to lower the administrative burden of creating a successful DMP.

The Federal Demonstration Partnership Template Pilot program brought together government and institutional partners to “test the effectiveness and usability of two DMSP templates developed in collaboration with representatives from participating ICs [NIH Institutes and Centers]”. The goal of this program is to:

  • understand engagement with researchers/PIs,
  • reduce the challenges of compliance by creating fillable PDF formatted DMPs,
  • provide more specific direction and endorsement of formats (by partnering with the widely-used DMPTool),
  • and increase the likelihood that DMPs will meet the expectations of NIH grants. 

The two templates have been dubbed Alpha and Bravo. Alpha is a PDF aimed at limiting free form entry while Bravo is a word document containing detailed prompts. 

These templates are now available in the DMPTool or you can download them from the FDP website.  

If you have questions about how to create a DMP, or would like to request a consultation about the new policy, please contact Anthony Dellureficio, Associate Librarian, Data Management.

Decrease of Early Breast Cancer Mortality Rates

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An observational cohort study led by Dr. Carolyn Taylor from the University of Oxford in the U.K. showed that mortality rates for women diagnosed with early breast cancer in England decreased from a 5-year mortality risk of 14% in the 1990s to 5% in 2010-2015.

Radiology Reading Rooms
Radiology Reading Rooms

The researchers analyzed data from 512,447 women. The study included data from the England National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service between January 1993 and December 2015, with a follow-up until December 2020.

The study’s results might also help providers identify prognostic risk factors for women diagnosed with early breast cancer.
The study was published in BMJ.

Check Out the MSK Library’s COVID-19 Publication Report

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The Synapse team led by Jeanine McSweeney, Associate Librarian, Scholarly Communications, has published an online report entitled “COVID-19 Publication Report” which features a snapshot in time (April 2020 to December 2022) of 607 works from sixty-five departments and services at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK).

While we continue to monitor MSK-authored COVID-19 scholarly works, we wanted to pause and take a moment to analyze this body of bibliographic references and share insights such as the top scoring papers via Altmetric, the top highly cited research papers, the increased usage of preprint servers, and a networking map that illustrates the research collaborations between MSK and other organizations.

What is special about this report is the time taken to annotate these citations with lay summaries written by the Research Informationists, helping to expand potential readership to a public audience.

Synapse is a public-facing resource and the authoritative bibliographic database of MSK publications, developed and maintained by a team of skilled librarians. This database provides a record of the research output written by MSK researchers, clinicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals.  To view other Synapse-related publications, click here.

Please feel free to reach out to me to share your thoughts about this report. We would love to hear what you think!

Donna Gibson
Director, Library Services