Data management at the end of research

"Post-research preserving or archiving means that the material will no longer be modified once the preserving/archiving begins, but the material will remain as it is at a certain point in time.” (Post-research preserving of research materials at the University of Eastern Finland. 2019, 1.)

Storage of research material after the research project has ended is called preserving or archiving, i.e. in everyday speech these terms may refer to the same issue. There are also more detailed definitions for these concepts, which are based on legislation and the use of authorities, and which should be known.

Preservation

• is pursuant to the Act on Information Management in Public Administration (906/2019, section 21), preserving the material for a fixed period and only for as long as it is needed for a specific purpose (for research materials, for example, a contract, a requirement of the funder or publisher, a law, etc.).

Archiving

• pursuant to the Public Information Management Act (906/2019, section 21), occurs after the end of the retention period when the material is not destroyed.
• means pursuant to the Archive Act (831/1994, section 8.3) permanent preserving.

Long-term preservation (PAS)

• refers to the permanent preserving of digital material (the Archive Act), i.e. archiving (the Public Information Management Act).

Opening

• refers to depositing research data openly available in a form that allows others to use it as freely as possible, for example in new research or for other purposes.
• must be carried out in accordance with legislation, agreements, licenses and ethical principles: The guiding principle is “as open as possible, as closed as necessary “.

Publishing

• includes opening up data according to more specific practices (cf. publication of research results).
• may in practice also be the same as opening research data.          
• will be implemented by using data repositories or data publications specialising in the publication of research data.

The research material and data must be preserved as the research project has come to an end, which enables the assessing of the research results and ensures their reliability. It is worth noting, that the time point for the end of the research project is not the same as the time when you stop collecting research material and/or data, but rather it is the time when you are finished with publishing the results of your research project. The post-research preservation of research data is planned already during the early stages of the research in the data management plan, for which you will find instructions in the first section of this UEF Data Support website on Data management planning and the beginning of research.

The preservation of research data should be planned in the beginning of the study in a data management plan, at least at an evaluative level, determining how long the data will be preserved and what actions will be taken with the research data after the study concludes. The plan should be updated if needed when the research progresses. When determining the period of preservation for research data, the researcher needs to consider, on a case-by-case basis, what kinds of obligations and, on the other hand, limitations are related to preserving the research data.

There are several aspects that must be considered with the preservation of research data. Preserving research data after research in University of Eastern Finland guidelines list examples of them:
•    the content of the data,
•    research consents or permissions,
•    informing the participants,
•    ownership of the data,
•    contracts related to the data,
•    verifiability and reproducibility of the research,
•    the requirements of the funders, or
•    any requirements of the publisher of the publication related to the data.

Basic steps for post-research preservation
1.    Before the research project begins: Make at least a preliminary plan already in the beginning of the study what will happen to the research data when the study is finished.  Consider the factors that guide the solutions and are used to justify the decisions related to preservation: legislation, general instructions including your university's policies and instructions, and the common practices in your own field.
2.    During the research project: Make sure to keep your research data organised and documented. 
3.    At the end of the research project: what to dispose and what to preserve for how long and where. Keep in mind the reasoning behind the decision (see paragraph 1). Perform final cleaning of the research data and preserve it as planned. 

Preservation period

The research data must be preserved for a certain time after the research in order to evaluate or validate the research results. Some of the research data may be worth permanent preservation either by law or otherwise. Preserving research data after research in University of Eastern Finland guidelines recommend preserving research data for "at least five years after the research" unless, for example, legislation requires a longer preservation period. For medical and health science research data, the most common preservation period for research data is 15 years after the end of the research. Irreplaceable national cultural heritage material must be preserved permanently. Cultural heritage materials include historical photographs, maps or drawings (also in digitised formats).

Preservation location

After the research is finished, the research data can be preserved in closed environments or opened to varying degrees for use by others through open data repositories or archives. Whatever the preservation solution, data security must be ensured.

If you continue to work at the University of Eastern Finland after the research, you can utilise the secure preservation solutions offered by the university. Information about the solutions is available on UEF Intranet ("Storing and sharing files"). Otherwise, private equipment must be used.

When the research project comes to end, research data can be preserved in closed environments or opened to different degrees for others to use, for example through open data publications, data repositories or archives. It is recommended that the research data will be opened for further use after the research, whenever possible. If the data cannot be opened, this must be justified in the data management plan. And the possibility to open metadata is good to bear in mind at this point, even if the actual research data was subject to legal or ethical factors restricting its openness.

Open access to research data enables the verification of the research and further utilisation of the research data. Sharing the research data and promoting its open access can be seen as a merit for a researcher, which is reflected, for example, in the national recommendation for good practices in researcher evaluation. Scientific journals may request a report on the availability of research data (so-called data availability/access statement). The description contains a concise description of the data types used in the publication, where the data can be found (persistent identifier, web address), and terms of use or restrictions. The journals often provide examples or instructions for preparing a data availability/access statement. Research funders (e.g. the Academy of Finland, EU research funding) and scientific publishers are increasingly requiring that research data should be made as open as possible. The background to all this lies in enabling the reuse of research outputs. The publication of unused research data is also recommended.

Opening research data for use by others

• extends the usability of the research outputs
• promotes research and enables the discovery of new observations and phenomena
• promotes research cooperation
• provides researchers with equal access to research data.

The objectives of openness of research data have been recorded internationally, for example in the UNESCO Open Science Recommendations and EU policies. The national policy on open access to research data 2021 provides the research community a framework for implementing the openness of data. University of Eastern Finland’s Open Science and Research Policy includes data policy. According to it, research data related to published research results produced with public funding must, in principle, be open whenever it is possible within the framework of the agreements concluded (ownership, rights of use, intellectual property rights and confidentiality), legislation and principles of research ethics and does not endanger the interests of the university.

More information about opening of research data is available on the UEF Open Research Data website. 

UEF eRepo (UEF eRepositorio), the open access materials repository of the University of Eastern Finland, contains theses and publications of the University of Eastern Finland, self-archived versions of articles and metadata of research data made available by our researchers.

Note, that UEF eRepo is not a data archive or data repository, i.e., UEF eRepo does not contain research data but only metadata of the research data of researchers at the University of Eastern Finland. Therefore, the researcher cannot submit research data to eRepo. Instead, the researchers can describe their data to the national Etsin service using Qvain Research Dataset Description Tool.  This is also a good option when you cannot open your research data for further use by storing it in a data repository. Information from Etsin is automatically transferred to eRepo.

If you have research data that you want to open for others to use, save it to a suitable data repository. Check if the metadata is automatically transferred to eRepo; for example, Finnish Social Science Data Archive, Language Bank, Zenodo, EUDAT, and Dryad are repositories from which the data is automatically transferred, when University of Eastern Finland is mentioned as organisation. If the information is not automatically transferred, describing the data in Etsin will make it appear in eRepo as well. 

Read more about opening data and choosing data repository from the UEF Open research website. 
 

Long-term preservation refers to the preservation of digital data permanently, for decades or even centuries. It aims to ensure that the highly significant datasets are reusable for future generations. Long-term preservation requires the maintenance of research data as functional and usable. In practice, it means converting outdated file formats, maintaining data integrity and reliability, and protecting data from damage in the longer term.

National Fairdata Digital Preservation Service (DPS) by CSC serves Finnish universities and state research institutes for long-term preservation for research data. Research data with long-term value to the organisation or nationally can be deposited there.
The utilisation of the DPS service and the value of the data is first considered together with the researcher and the university, i.e. in practice UEF Data Support. The Fairdata DPS lists the following perspectives to assist the determination of long-term preservation:
•    Possibilities for further use of the data. 
•    Considerable resources have been used to produce the data. 
•    The data have been produced as part of research that would be difficult, expensive or impossible to repeat. 
•    The data are otherwise of national or organisational significance. 

If the data are found suitable for long-term preservation, the university will contact the Fairdata Digital Preservation Service (DPS) and the data can be prepared for long-term preservation.
 

More information

National digital preservation services | Digitalpreservation.fi/en. The website contains news, definitions of terms and technical solutions and other instructions and publications related to national long-term preservation services. 

What is long-term preservation? | Fairdata Digital Preservation Service (DPS) (Fairdata.fi).

Data security must be considered when disposing of research data. The waste basket in the office or the computers trash bin are not sufficient places of disposal in all cases. This is particularly important if the material contains personal data or sensitive data.

Paper material can be destroyed in a secure manner by shredding, burning or placing the paper in a data security container provided by the workplace.

Simply removing (deleting) electronic data and transferring it to the computer's trash bin does not, as such, mean permanently disposing of the data. Deleted data can be recovered even after reformatting the hard drive. There are various programs for the permanent disposal of data, which are based, for example, on overwriting the data or magnetizing the hard disk. The storage medium can also be mechanically crushed to become unreadable, i.e., the data on a USB stick can be destroyed by destroying the entire stick. The university's IT services offer solutions for these.

If you are unsure about how to safely destroy research data, consult UEF Data Support. The UEF data security instructions also cover the disposal of materials. 

More information

Destruction, anonymisation or archiving of data at the conclusion of research. Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman website.