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Short and Long Term Storage and Management

Short and Long Term Storage and Management refer to the policies and infrastructure you put in place to protect the security and integrity of your data and to ensure your data remains accessible during and after the life of the project.

Preservation refers to the conceptual and practical procedures required to ensure access to data over the very long term.

For more information, see Preserving Your Digital Materials.

Things to Think About

Make a plan for data storage and management at the beginning of the project. Consider data managment costs in the budget, especially the ultimate fate of the data generated by the project.

What data should be kept? Researchers should be able to recreate the results using the data that you have preserved.
What systematic backup procedures, including systems description, are in place for the data? Keep multiple copies of your data and back your data up regularly.
How long should the data be kept? Will it be useful to researchers in 3, 10, 50 years? Remember that future researchers may find uses for the data that you have not anticipated. On the other hand, raw data used for models may not be useful beyond your project.
What security mechanisms are required for the data and how will they be implemented? Are there confidentiality or intellectual property (patent, for example) issues?
Determine what kind of data storage will be usable and cost-effective, based on the these considerations.
Is commercial cloud storage an option? Consider the cost, which is based on the size of the dataset, the frequency with which it is accessed or downloaded, security issues, and format migration.

Example Language

All original raw data files and data source processing programs will be stored in open standards whenever possible and versioned over time. This data will be stored on a local server that is maintained according to the security and backup policies of the Engineering Department.
Due to the private nature of the data generated by this project, all data will be stored on a secure server where read-access is only available to researchers. Upon completion of the project, all sensitive data will be disposed according to the University IRB's guidelines for research involving audio, video, or digital recordings.
During the life of the project, data will be stored on a server managed by the Biology department. Upon project completion, data will be submitted to the Dryad international data repository, http://datadryad.org/.

Last Edited: 4 December 2012