Tips on looking after and sharing your data

You’ve invested a lot of time and effort in creating your data, so keep it safe. Learn how to select what to keep and how to store it carefully. Discover why and how to back it up to make sure it is not lost. Find out how to preserve your data and back-ups, and consider how you can get the most from your data, perhaps through re-use and sharing.

This short video illustrates the value of good data management and provides a few key best practices (from Digital Preservation Europe)

• Data security for researchers
• Storage
• Backup
• Fieldwork
• Long-term storage and preservation
• Selection – choosing what to keep
• Sharing – what, why and how to share data
• Digital repositories – a dedicated page where we provide detailed guidance on various data repositories

Data security for researchers

Understanding and mitigating the cybersecurity risks to your research data is very important, when working at home and abroad. The UIS Data Security for researchers website provides useful information on device security, collaboration tools security best practice, conferences and contributions outside the university, risk and research data impact assessment, and useful links.See also the International Engagement Hub and related International Engagement guidance videos for further information.

Storage

Choosing the right way to store your data can help you work more flexibly, easily and quickly. Thoughtful storage solutions can also simplify version control and collaboration with others. You may be required by your PI or funder to store your data in a particular place, or you may have more choices available. No matter which solution you use, the two golden rules of storage apply.

1. Where possible, only store what you need to keep.
2. Store crucial data in more than one secure location.

A range of different storage options are provided for University members by UIS.

Can I use portable storage media (e.g. memory sticks, external hard drives)?

Portable storage media such as memory sticks (USB sticks) are more risky and vulnerable to loss and damage. Computing officers will not back them up or support them centrally. It is important not to rely on them as your only copy of important data.

They are very convenient though, and useful for:

• temporary copies/moving files e.g. taking a presentation to a conference
• secondary or back-up copies
• files only one person at a time needs access to
• data you can afford to lose

Fieldwork

If your research involves working away from Cambridge, you should refer to the University of Cambridge’s guidance on Safeguarding work away, see the University of Cambridge Risk Assessment Training Video and complete a risk assessment. In addition, if you are collecting personal or sensitive data, consider the safety of yourself, those you are working with and of your data.

Research Data Management when conducting fieldwork

The key is to plan well in advance, ideally complete a Data Management Plan which will help you address some of the issues that you may face before you undertake the fieldwork. Tailor your data collection and storage to your situation, and work within the recommended security classification. This will help ensure sufficient processes are in place to protect the data you collect appropriately. If you are travelling internationally, the International Engagement hub is a new portal with information to support your travel activities. You should check the Government foreign travel advice of the country you are visiting before you travel.

Data Security

• Ensure the data on the device you are collecting your research data (e.g tablet, laptop) is secure by following the UIS guide for Data Security for Researchers.
• Back up your research data regularly using external drives and cloud options (where appropriate for your data security classification).
• Back up paper or non-digital records regularly for example taking digital images or scan field notes preferably as a TIFF image or PDF.

Qualitative Research

Recording interviews

If you are conducting interviews using audio and video recordings for example WAV or MP3 files, use a secure device to record the interviews where possible, although keep it practical – something that you can use. For example, this may be a dedicated audio recorder or a phone to record the audio, these are acceptable but keep in mind where these will be stored, transferred and backed up. but keep in mind where these will be stored, transferred and backed up.

Before you begin audio recording ensure you collect informed consent, either written consent or verbal (if verbal it is best to record this). Consider what needs to be collected and if appropriate, explain to avoid mentioning personal details, full names, specifics or dates where these are not needed (tailor this to your situation in case this inhibits candour). 

Transfer and storage of interviews

It is recommended to encrypt the data as soon as possible and transfer to a secure area (dependent on the data security classification) then delete from the original device (once the safe transfer is confirmed).

Audio-transcription

Transcription of the audio files to text format usually forms part of the analysis and can also be useful for archiving. The most secure method to transcribe your interview is to do this manually but this can be time-consuming so you may opt to use computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). For the chosen software, consider where the data is stored and that this complies with the security classification of the data you are working with (e.g. if software uses a cloud-based server that is located outside of the UK, this may have implications for data security and funders requirements).

Anonymising interviews

You may want to share or archive your interviews for reuse and the best way to achieve this is by anonymisation. This still needs to comply with the informed consent obtained, particularly in reference to sharing data publicly. It can be difficult and time-consuming to anonymise files such as audio, video and photographs and can reduce the quality and value of the data. Anonymisation of interview transcriptions is most effective, the UKDS has some good advice on how to anonymise qualitative data.

Digital Collection and Surveys

If conducting digital surveys, use a secure webform to replace paper-based surveys UIS recommends using the Qualtrics account subscribed by the University which has data security classifications such as ISO 27001.

ODK is an open-source data collection platform, that can be used on mobile devices to create customised digital survey forms via KoboToolbox which can also collect geotagged photos, sketches, location coordinates. It can be used offline, so data can still be collected in locations with poor internet. Encryption can be added to further increase data security.

Fieldwork outside of the UK (or the EU)

For fieldwork outside of UK or EU, consider local rules and see the University’s guidance on  Safeguarding Work Away To comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), any transfer of data to countries outside the EU needs adequate levels of protection and regulations in place and must follow export control regulations. This means that for researchers, particularly those in the Social Sciences, where there is long-standing tradition of conducting fieldwork outside of the EU, you will need to ensure that there are appropriate safeguards in place.  

If your research relates to indigenous people (for example data relating to indigenous people, lands, territories, resources, knowledge and geographical indicators) follow the CARE principles. The CARE principles are a set of best practices to manage research and research data related to Indigenous people.

Backup

Nearly everyone who has experienced serious data loss did not think it would happen to them - but it does happen periodically. The results can be catastrophic for your research project, or for you personally. However, you can prevent data loss by following good backup practices.

I usually store my data on a department or college network drive. Does that mean it is backed up?

Many computer networks within the University back up files automatically, but some do not.

Ask your local computing officer or network administrator:

• whether files on the network are automatically backed up, and, if so
• which folders or drives on the network are backed up automatically
• how frequently the backups happen, and
• how long backups are stored for

Can I back up my data onto the cloud?

Cloud storage provides a convenient way to store, back up and retrieve data. There are many providers of cloud storage out there and you should check their terms of use before using them for your research data. The University provides three different cloud options - OneDrive, Dropbox for Business and Google Drive - which should be accessed with your University email address (i.e. log in with your @cam email). If you are handling personal or sensitive data then you should check the cloud option is compliant with any data protection rules the data are bound by.

What is the best practice for backing up data?

IT professionals strongly recommend that:

• you make two, or even three, back-ups of all important documents and data not stored on a networked file server (failure rates for storage media are probably higher than you think!)
• you store one back-up in a different location from the others (to keep your files safe in case of a fire, flood, burglary, etc.)
• you use multiple different types of storage media or storage media from different manufacturers (to protect against multiple media failures, e.g. a bad batch of discs)

How should I choose what back up storage media to use?

Your choice of storage media for back up will depend on the quantity and type of data you have: memory sticks, online back up services (i.e. FTP servers) may be convenient for small amounts of data, whereas hard drives or magnetic tapes may be more appropriate for large volumes or when you need to store data offline for security reasons.

How should I choose what to back up and when?

Back up can be time-consuming or expensive if your files take up a lot of space, or if you keep different files in different locations. To help you decide what to back up and when, think about which files you would need in order to re-create or restore in the case of loss and which data are crucial for your work?

You may choose to only back up certain data, or to back up files you use every day more regularly than others. The basic rule of thumb is:

• The more important the data and the more often they change, the more regularly they need to be backed up
• If your files take up a large amount of space and backing up all of them (or backing them up sufficiently frequently) would be difficult or expensive, you may want to focus on backing up specific key information, programs, algorithms, or documentation that you would need in order to re-create the data in case of data loss.

Data Preservation

The term 'preservation' means ensuring something can still be seen or used over time. In the context of digital data, long-term preservation is the process of maintaining data over time so that they can still be found, understood, accessed and used in the future.

Why does preservation matter to me?

You may think that by saving your data in one or more places you have made sure it is effectively preserved, but with digital technology developing so quickly, your digital data are at risk from one or more of the following problems:

• file formats might not be compatible with future software, and therefore unreadable
• even if a document can still be opened with new software, it may be altered to a degree as to no longer be understandable or reliable for continued research
• storage media may have been degraded, scratched or broken, especially if they are portable (e.g. USB sticks), so information might be lost
• the files or data will not be understood because there is no supporting documentation or metadata, or this has not been preserved correctly either.

What can I do to ensure my data are usable in the future?

When creating, organising and storing your data you can take a few initial steps to try and ensure your data remain useable and understandable for the future:

• effectively document your data so that it can be understood in the future
• periodically move data to new storage media (drives degrade over time)
• keep more than one copy of data, and on a variety of storage media
• migrate data to new software versions, or use a format that can easily be imported to various software programs
• share the data and metadata in a trusted repository that offers long-term data preservation.

Ideally this should be covered in a data management plan at the start of a project, so that you can factor any associated time and resources into your budget.

Selection: choosing what to keep

It is tempting to keep everything, just in case you need it in the future, but keeping all your files for the foreseeable future costs money, and makes it more difficult to find the truly important things. It is also worth remembering that if you have something on file, then it might be subject to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

What does selection involve?

Choosing what to keep and what can be disposed of or deleted is always going to involve a subjective judgement, as nobody knows exactly what information is going to be wanted in the future.

All we can do is think the matter through carefully, abide by the policies we need to (e.g. from funders) and document decisions made and the reasons for them. It will not be a perfect process, but should at least be a sensible one.

Cannot I just keep everything?

There are some good reasons why selection is worth doing:

• because storage costs money; storage requires effort / staff hours; storing massive amounts of data complicates finding and accessing the truly important files.
• because Freedom of Information laws mean that what you keep on file may have to be disclosed, if requested.

How do I know what to keep and what to delete?

Ensure that you follow any data retention requirements outlined in your funder's research data policy. In addition, follow the recommendations in the University of Cambridge Statement of Records Management Practice and Master Records Retention Schedule). 

These following questions, based on material devised by the Digital Curation Centre, can help you decide what you should keep and what can be deleted:

• does my funder or the university need me to keep this data and / or make it available for a certain amount of time?
• does this data constitute the 'vital records' of a project, organisation or consortium and therefore need to be retained indefinitely?
• do I have the legal and intellectual property rights to keep and re-use this data? If not, can these be negotiated?
• does sufficient documentation and descriptive information (‘metadata’) exist to explain the data, and allow the data or record to be found wherever it ends up being stored?
• if I need to pay to keep the data, can I afford it?

Once you have sorted through your files and asked these questions you then need to:

• check if any data protection responsibilities apply (see 'data protection legislation' in the University of Cambridge Statement of Records Management Practice and Master Records Retention Schedule).
• prepare documentation for each file
• find out how to deposit in a data repository.

Some funders require that all data is kept even if it is not publicly shared. In these cases you will need to find a suitable solution for archiving your data. Your department might have a mechanism for this or you might want to use the UIS' Research Cold Store.