Preservation is about making sure active measures are in place for long-term access to your data. A sustainable preservation program should account for organizational issues and technological concerns.
What to do:
- As the project wraps up, package up your data and metadata and store it together in a suitable repository for long-term access. Royal Roads is has access to a tool called Dataverse. For more information contact contact RRU Library.
Why do it:
- Because data can be lost due to hardware failure, human error, hacking or virus infection.
- Because using a central repository makes your data easier to find
- Because you can track the number of downloads (secondary uses) which counts like citations.
How to do it:
- Identify data with long-term value
- Abide by your obligations to funding bodies, institutional policies and the law
- Determine what iterations of the data files should be preserved
- Ensure your documentation and metadata is complete
Things to consider:
- What data should be retained and preserved?
- Where will you preserve your data?
- How long are you going to preserve your research data?
