Is data preservation the same as data storage?
No, data preservation is about handing over data to a third party to professionally store and, if you choose, make it publicly accessible. Data storage is where you are saving data to hard drives, your personal cloud account, etc.
Check out this working document "Answers to Concerns About Opening Up Data" by Christopher Gutteridge, University of Southampton, and Alexander Dutton, University of Oxford.
What data should be preserved?
- Data required by publishers, funding organizations, grants, and institutions.
- Data that was expensive to gather, is unique, and/or would be hard to replicate.
How long should the data be kept?
- Check agency/funding requirements.
- There are no hard rules since the answer might be indefinitely, but best practices recommend at least 6 years post publication.
Where should it be preserved?
- It is best if the data is saved to a data repository with data curate services.
- Data curate services include data integrity checks, format migrations when needed, and creating descriptive records to make the data easier to find and more citable.
Below are some popular data repository options. Before choosing, consider the following:
- What, if any, are the costs?
- Is data automatically public?
- What types of files can be uploaded?
- Does it allocate enough data storage space?
- Do I want to only upload data, or other materials and preprints too?
Repositories
