Kryštof KomanecThis blog post focuses on a comparison between one of the widely used Data Management Plan creation tools, DMPonline and FAIR Wizard. After reading this blog post, you will understand which tool you should choose for your work and what benefits it will have on your results.
Selecting the right tool for your work is crucial. Choosing the wrong tool may lead to inferior results or even hinder the completion of your work. A good tool simplifies or clarifies your work. It enables you to achieve better results and reduces time to be spent. For every task, there is a variety of tools available nowadays. On top of that you are often told which tool to work with without much further consideration.
While DMPonline will offer you ways to generate a Data Management Plan, the road will be a bit harsh. The goal of the FAIR Wizard is to simplify the process of creating a Data Management Plan for researchers. To demonstrate how DMPonline and FAIR Wizard approach things differently, there are a few screenshots of how the same things are done in DMPonline and the FAIR Wizard. One example would be the answer to the question of whether a dataset will be reused in our research project:
DMPonline lets you write the answer without much guidance. In the FAIR Wizard on the other hand you are answering several predefined questions to get all the details that are considered necessary in the Data Management Plan. This process gathers essential information, including data ownership, usage conditions, and versioning details. The information is then incorporated into the Data Management Plan:
Easier filling out of the questionnaire means the researcher can just focus on answering the questions instead of scratching their head on what else should they include in their answer. And this is just one example. This applies to the rest of the Data Management Plan creation process as well. Using FAIR Wizard results in less writing and more valuable output.
User Experience, or UX, is an important part of any modern application. Researchers aim to minimize the time spent on creating Data Management Plans so they can focus on their research. Good UX reduces the time needed to work with any tool. Here is a list of a few examples of why the FAIR Wizard offers a superior UX:
| DMPonline | FAIR Wizard |
|---|---|
| You have to press the Save button all the time. | Every action is saved. You can return to any previous version anytime. |
| Different tabs for different information to be filled, overall cluttered. | All of the information is filled into one questionnaire, which has a well-arranged structure. |
| Limited and static guidance throughout the Data Management Plan creation. | Advices to answers, literature and other sources in questions, Metrics, Project phases and other ways to guide the Research to the best Data Management approach. |
Experience of working with the FAIR Wizard would be seen as smoother, clearer and overall more comfortable.
In DMPonline, users must manually input nearly all information by writing. In the FAIR Wizard, with the help of Integration Questions, it is possible to utilize existing organization data and use them as a source while creating a Data Management Plan.
There are also other resources available with FAIR Wizard, such as Integration Hub, enabling users to set up custom integrations to be used in Questionnaires. Moreover, the latest added feature consists of ReportingDB and Grafana for easy access to data of our instance, enabling the creation of reports.
Institutional alignment is also supported by Project Templates that can be used to ease the work of researchers even more, as Project Templates enable prefilling of some data into the questionnaire.
In addition to the features available in the FAIR Wizard, there are also additional resources, including a detailed and coherent guide, regularly updated to align with the latest version of the FAIR Wizard, and a playlist of educational, walkthrough YouTube videos.
The Starter version of the FAIR Wizard is completely free and requires no commitment.
Last but not least, while DMPonline is updated rather sporadically, the FAIR Wizard receives monthly updates which usually contain new features on top of regular bug fixes.
There are several tools available that support the creation of Data Management Plans. Only a few of them could be considered comprehensive tools rather than simple form systems. Among them, the FAIR Wizard stands out as the winner in terms of the value it provides to users and their organizations, overall usability, available features, and user experience.
