The main goal of the researchers in the Data Stewardship Wizard is to consider all the challenges and plan how they will work with the data before, during and after the experiment, and of course, get the Data Management Plan (DMP).
Knowledge Model is a tree-like structure of chapters, questions, answers, references and more that captures the knowledge of what should be considered in a DMP and the research experiment in general.
It is not bound to a specific DMP template but a research field or institution. Knowledge Models are provided by DSW itself or by institutional data stewards.
The Knowledge Model is a template for a comprehensive smart questionnaire. Once you pick one, you can start filling in answers related to your research. Even though the questionnaires are usually very complex, you don't have to answer everything at once. Different questions become relevant in different experiment phases, so you only fill in what you need.
Research is teamwork more often than not. In DSW, it is easy to share the project with your colleagues and work on the DMP together online.
The significant advantage of the Knowledge Models is that they are not bound to a specific DMP template. Once you have your answers, you can choose what DMP template to use. Do you need a document following the Science Europe recommendations or the machine-actionable DMP? No problem, you simply pick the DMP template and get your answers transformed into the desired form with a single click.
Things change through time, and it's important to keep your project and DMPs updated. You can easily improve and change your answers and generate updated DMPs while keeping all the previous generated documents stored in DSW. You can explore the history of all the changes made to the projects, name important versions or come back to any point in the project's history.
The DMP is not the only thing that evolves. Knowledge Models and DMP templates get updated as well. But don't worry, with DSW, it is easy to update your project to newer versions of the Knowledge Models and keep everything up to date!
