304.1 Defining requirements for machine-actionable data management plans

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are usually free-form text documents describing data used and produced in research projects in order to foster preservation and re-use of the generated data. The workload and bureaucracy often associated with traditional DMPs can be reduced when they become machine-actionable. However, there is no common definition of what machine-actionable DMPs really are. This hinders the communication between stakeholders and leads to scepticism, or conversely to exaggerated expectations. This paper aims to clarify what machine-actionable DMPs are and provides examples of how involved stakeholders can benefit from them. It describes an open stakeholder consultation performed by the RDA DMP Common Standards working group. The main objective was to define the scope of information covered by machine-actionable DMPs and formulate an initial set of requirements for a common data model for machine actionable DMPs. To do this we used methodology known from system and software requirements engineering to collect information on how needs for information of particular stakeholders evolve over phases of the research data lifecycle.