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Data Collection and Storage

Preservation in research data management refers to the long-term maintenance, accessibility, and integrity of research data beyond the active research phase. It ensures that data remains usable, understandable, and secure for future use, whether for verification, reuse, or historical records.

Why is it important?

Ensuring you appropriately preserve your research data:

  • Ensures long term accessibility and reuse.
  • Protetcts research integrity and transparency.
  • Meets institutional or funder requirements.

How to preserve your data

  • Store your data in a national repository, if appropriate.
  • Use non-proprietary, open formats (e.g. .csv, .tiff, .xml.).
  • Maintain metadata and documentation.
  • Back up data regularly and store in multiple, secure storage solutions.
  • Maintain data integrity by using checksums.
    • Use a tool like the Library of Congress' Bagger.
  • Plan for secure disposal.

Recommended resources:

Sunshine State Digital Network. (2023). A short introduction to digital preservation.

Data retention and disposal refer to the practices and policies governing how long research data should be stored (retention) and when it should be securely deleted or destroyed (disposal).

Why is it important?

Ensuring you appropriately retain and dispose of your data:

  • Ensures adherence to data protection laws and ethical standards.
  • Helps maintain the integrity of data while it's retained, and ensures sensitive data is securely destroyed to prevent misuse.
  • Protects personal and confidential information, particularly in fields like health research, by securely disposing of data after it's no longer needed.
  • Well-retained data remains available for future verification, replication, or reuse, supporting transparency and reproducibility in research.

How to retain and dispose your data

  1. Retain data for the required time, as per organisational or funder policies
    1. Follow approrpriate security and preservation guidance while you need to retain your data.
  2. Once your retention period has expired, dispose of your data securely
    1. Use secure deletion software (e.g., DBAN) to ensure data cannot be recovered. Simply deleting a file is not enough. 
    2. Overwrite files multiple times to guarantee complete destruction.
    3. Encrypt files before deleting them to ensure that even if recovered, they cannot be read.
    4. For external drives, use professional destruction services to ensure physical destruction.
    5. Use secure document desctruction bins for paper data.
  3. Keep a record of disposal
    1. Record what was disposed, when, and how.