Five steps to decide what data to keep a checklist for appraising research data v.1 Edit

Preface

This guide aims to help UK Higher Education Institutions aid their researchers in making informed choices about what research data to keep. The content complements other DCC guides: How to Appraise & Select Research Data for Curation,¹ and How to Develop Research Data Management Services.² The guide will be relevant to researchers making decisions on a project-by-project basis, or formulating departmental guidelines. It assumes that decisions on particular datasets will normally be made by researchers with advice from the appropriate staff (e.g. academic liaison librarians) taking into account any institutional policy on Research Data Management (RDM) and guidance available within their own domain. As such, the guide should also be relevant to staff with responsibility for defining such policy in a Higher Education Institution, a Professional or Learned Society or similar disciplinary body.

The guide assumes that part way through their research the Principal Investigator, or other researcher responsible for data management, will want to choose what data to keep, informed by commitments already made to share or retain data (e.g. in a Data Management Plan) . The unit of appraisal is a ‘data collection’ and this may include different files carrying different access permissions and/or licence conditions.

The text also assumes that the institution will provide the following capabilities:

• institutional catalogue/registry of publicly-funded data of long-term value, enabling potential users to find out what data exists, why, when and how it was generated, and how to access it
• facilities to keep selected data of potential long-term value if no external repository is available and help to digitise any non-digital material if there is a valid external request

No assumption is made about how either of the above capabilities will be provided; for example, they might be repository or managed storage services, distinct from or integrated with a publications repository or a CRIS (Current Research Information System). In either case the capability could be provided in-house, or outsourced e.g. through Janet Cloud Services.³ The guide may be adapted to reflect local services and guidance on selecting external repositories for data deposition.⁴ DCC can provide help with this customisation to institutions’ needs and visual design.⁵

Source

@misc{whyte_five_2014,
	title = {Five steps to decide what data to keep a checklist for appraising research data v.1 {\textbar} {DCC}},
	copyright = {CC BY 4.0 International},
	url = {https://www.dcc.ac.uk/guidance/how-guides/five-steps-decide-what-data-keep},
	language = {en},
	urldate = {2023-12-14},
	journal = {Five steps to decide what data to keep},
	author = {Whyte, Angus},
	month = oct,
	year = {2014}
}