Research Data Management: Selecting data to deposit

Research data is the evidence collected or generated during the course of research with a view to its use as a basis for research findings. BU staff and postgraduate researchers are required under the Research Data Policy to deposit their data in BORDaR (or another suitable data repository) following the end of the research project.

The Data Management Plan (DMP) completed at the start of the project should have identified any data selected for long-term preservation. This is any data needed to validate research findings, or which would be valuable to future research.

In addition, data selected for long-term preservation should take into account:

• Ethical considerations - For example, it may not be appropriate to publish datasets which could identify participants.
• Intellectual Property Rights - For example, data can only be published with the consent of all copyright holders.
• Costs - To save storage (and therefore cost) it may not be necessary to deposit all the data. For example, where audio recordings have been transcribed, it may be preferable to only deposit the transcription. It's also not necessary to deposit data that can be reproduced with the appropriate documentation.