| Preserve research outputs and data |
Digital preservation ensures that research outputs and data remain accessible and usable over the long term. Digital objects may vary widely in format and content (e.g. born-digital research outputs and/or data, digitised legacy audio-visual formats, 2D and 3D imaging reproductions).
Important steps in digital preservation include:
- creation of representative information to ensure discoverability
- transformation of file formats to standards that ensure long-term access
- monitoring and evaluation of outputs and data to ensure integrity.
As you begin to create data, you will need to carefully consider which data need to be preserved. In general, data should be preserved if:
- it is historically significant
- it is frequently requested for reuse
- it supports published research
- it is vulnerable
- the data required for your research is not your own, and the future availability of the original data is uncertain, you wish, or are required, to share your data.
Also consider:
- is it necessary to preserve multiple versions of a file or is the most recent version sufficient in terms of your funder guidelines?
- is the project still in progress or is it complete? Long-term projects may require periodic preservation of data before the project is actually completed.
Once you have decided which data you should preserve, you may want to deposit your data within a repository.
