AbstractData and how that data are organized, accessed, and used, remain central to the advancement of science, as evidenced through calls for reproducibility and demands to enable re‐use. Data management plans describe the roles, responsibilities, and activities for managing data during and after research. This paper presents the development of a data management plan scorecard. The assessment of data management plans provides one measure to evaluate how data are planned to be shared and a first step down the road towards shareable data. The scorecard provides a widely‐applicable, scalable, and simple tool to assess completeness and quality of 15 data elements commonly required in all data management plans.