NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy

The NIH recognizes that making data available and reusable for other researchers may incur expenses. Due to this, researchers are permitted to ask for funding for data management and sharing in the budget and budget justification portions of their applications. Details on NIH-approved and disapproved expenses are provided below.

Reasonable, allowable costs may be included in NIH budget requests. For example:

• Collecting data
• Producing supporting documentation
• Preparing data for transmission to and storage at a chosen repository for long-term preservation and access, or formatting data in accordance with established community standards
• Anonymizing data
• Generating metadata that promotes reuse, interpretation, and discovery
• Considerations for managing local data, such as the distinct and specialized information infrastructure required for local administration and preservation (for example, before deposit into an established repository)

• Data deposit fees and other established repositories for data preservation and sharing

The following expenses cannot be included in NIH budget requests:

• Institutional overhead expenses that include infrastructure costs.
• Costs related to conducting research on a regular basis, such as those related to gathering or acquiring access to research data.
• Expenses that are incorrectly or repeatedly invoiced as both direct and indirect charges.