Data management policy for research infrastructures

Research infrastructures should have a research data management policy that offers guidelines to staff and users and ensures the appropriate maintenance of research data. This entails having clear instructions on how and where the produced data can be preserved for reasonable periods of time and on how the user should make the data available for verification and (re-)use.¹ Data produced by the research infrastructure should aim to be FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable)².

Briefly outline the main principles of your data management policy using the following themes. Only reply to those questions that are relevant for your infrastructure. The maximum length of the data management policy is five pages. The font size should be 12 pt, line spacing 1.15 and margins 20 mm. We recommend using figures and tables to clarify the text.

General description of data managed within research infrastructure

• What kinds of data are produced by or associated with the research infrastructure?
• Does you infrastructure handle personal or sensitive data? If yes, please give a link to your data privacy policy or attach the document.
• Give a rough estimate of the size of the data produced, for example per day, month or year.
• Does your infrastructure use data quality control procedures or recommend these to users? If yes, please describe these procedures.

Agreements on rights of use

• How are ownership and user rights agreed upon concerning research data?
• If you have a user agreement document, please give a link to it or attach the document

Opening or restricted sharing of data

• What part of the data managed by the research infrastructure is restricted, openly available or published?
• Describe development work and actions that you have for opening or the restricted sharing of data.

Describe the guidelines you give to users on the following issues:

• How should the research infrastructure be cited?
• Do you provide a model/example data citation? Do you provide unique and persistent identifiers (e.g. Digital Object Identifier (DOI)) for datasets, records or other digital objects?
• What licence(s) do you recommend for data sharing?
• How do you recommend that data is preserved in the long term?

Documentation and metadata

• What kinds of tools and guidance do you provide for documentation and metadata?

Storage, backup and access control to data

• What kinds of data storing services do you provide?
  • Do you provide services for storing sensitive data?
• What kind of certificate do you have for your data storage service?

1. European Commission, (2016) European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures - Principles and Guidelines for Access and Related Services (Chapter 4 – Principles, pp. 10–11).
2. FAIR Data Principles