Presentation given by Garret McMahon, DRI Research Data Specialist at DRI Community Forum June 2018 on 'Planning for the long term preservation of humanities and social science research data'.

1. Garret McMahon
Research Data Specialist, Digital Repository of Ireland
Royal Irish Academy
Planning for the long-term
preservation of humanities and
social science research data
DRI Community Forum – 26 June 2018

2. The collection and preservation remit of the Digital Repository of
Ireland
‘…social science or qualitative data and research data from a range of
Social Sciences and Humanities projects based in our academic
consortium partners’.
DRI Collection Policy, 2015 https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/s465jx541.

3. What is research data management?
Documented activities and practices that support long-term
preservation and use of data
Why?
Research data should have sustainable value by being:
• Discoverable
• Accessible for interpretation
• Reusable
Planning Storing Documenting
Anonymising Formatting Controlling Access

4. What is a Data Management Plan (DMP)?
A detailed record of all aspects of data management that takes place
over the entire research lifecycle when data produced as a result
of research activity are collected, organised, documented, shared,
and preserved.

5. DMP’s help demonstrate transparency and openness and return on
public investment by validating that data as an output of publicly
funded research are discoverable, accessible and reusable.
As well as being good research practice this can also be a research
funder requirement.
Why is a DMP important to research design and planning?

6. Privacy Impact Assessment if working with personal data

7. The Research Data Management Lifecycle
Image courtesy of the University of Virginia Library http://data.library.virginia.edu/data-management/lifecycle/

8. What do I need to consider in my DMP?
From ‘Research Data and the DRI’ http://dri.ie/research-data-and-dri

9. Why is a DMP important to long-term preservation?
Datasets, regardless of form or structure, are authoritative evidence of
research activity when they possess the characteristics of authenticity,
reliability, integrity, and usability
Adapted from ISO 15489-2016 ‘Information and documentation – Records Management Part 1: Concepts and Principles’

10. What do I need to plan for to ensure the long-term
preservation of my data?
Organising and documenting your data
Project documentation
Vital to facilitate preservation and reuse, as well as supporting
administration and management during the project.
File formats
Identification and management, during project planning and data creation
stages, of suitable file formats with clear migration paths for both
preservation and reuse.
Metadata
How will it be captured during processing?
Is metadata associated with reused or secondary data noted in data level
documentation?

11. What do I need to plan for to ensure the long-term
preservation of my data?
Processing your data
Interoperability
Will you use unique identifiers (UIDs) for processed data during data
collection and analysis?
How will you support citation of the dataset?
Will the repository providing long-term preservation associate a
persistent identifier (PID) with the publicly available dataset?

12. What do I need to plan for to ensure the long-term
preservation of my data?
Protecting your data
Personal data/confidential information
Do you need to consider the use of an anonymisation protocol?
Does your rights management framework include depositor and end-
user licenses, and legal agreements?
Informed consent
Consent forms should kept as long as the research data are retained
(during the active phase of the project and when archived).

13. What do I need to plan for to ensure the long-term
preservation of my data?
Protecting your data
Intellectual property rights (IPR)/Copyright
What are the terms that enabled the collection or use of the research
data?
Are there any contractual and funder obligations to be considered?
What are the licensing considerations for the use of secondary data?
Have you gather the required permissions to collect and reuse the
data?
What rights need to be transferred to the repository of deposit?

14. To conclude
• Your DMP will change during the course of the research project.
• Your DMP underpins context and should be preserved in the long-
term along with your data.
• If working with personal or sensitive data conduct a Privacy Impact
Assessment (PIA) during the research design phase. It should be
preserved along with the rest of your project documentation.
• Please visit the DRI’s research data resource pages
http://dri.ie/research-data-and-dri