Which data are of long-term value and should be retained, shared, and/or preserved?

Questions to consider:

• What data must be retained/destroyed for contractual, legal, or regulatory purposes?
• How will you decide what other data to keep?
• What is the foreseeable research uses for the data?
• How long will the data be retained and preserved?

Guidance:

Consider how the data may be reused e.g. to validate your research findings, conduct new studies, or for teaching. Decide which data to keep and for how long. This could be based on any obligations to retain certain data, the potential reuse value, what is economically viable to keep, and any additional effort required to prepare the data for data sharing and preservation. Remember to consider any additional effort required to prepare the data for sharing and preservation, such as changing file formats.

SAMPLE :

We consider that all our collected data has long-term value as it is collected from animals and would be useful in the future for other research projects. Possibly, the data can be used as an input of different mathematical models and as part of large-scale AI-assisted discoveries. The data is shared through scientific publications that are one of the project outcomes and directly using the standardized output of our database for researchers interested in it.

The data has no expiration date, so that it will be retained at least ten years from the end of the project. This does not require any major effort because the data collection is set up in a way that it is ready for long-term preservation after linking it with the database.

See the DCC guide: How to appraise and select research data for curation.