How will data sharing and issues of confidentiality be handled without having one person in charge?
The Leadership Plan should outline the governance and organizational structure of the research project, including communication plans and procedures for resolving conflicts. This includes data sharing and confidentiality policies; the presence of more than a single PD/PI does not excuse the PD/PIs from official requirements. Note that the NIH policy on data sharing applies only to applications with large budgets http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/data_sharing/index.htm). NIH policy states that applications requesting $500,000 or more in direct costs for any single year are required to include a plan for data sharing or to state why data sharing is not possible. Data sharing must be addressed in the Significance and Budget sections of the application, and a description of the data sharing plan (or an explanation for its absence) must appear at the end of the Research Plan section.
