Data Management Policy
ACEP is committed to disseminating its research and publications. We generate and steward valuable data as an asset from the start and, wherever possible, release it to the public in a way that makes it open, discoverable, and usable.
Access to reliable and complete data is essential for research. ACEP embraces the role of responsible data manager for institutional and grant data. As such each ACEP project should have an associated Data Management Plan that addresses both institutional and grant requirements but also ensures ACEP data management policies listed below are covered.
This Policy should be read in conjunction with the following resources:
- UAF Office of Research Integrity’s Responsible Conduct guidance on UAF Data Management.
- UAF Office of Grants & Contracts Data Management Plans & Data Sharing
Policies:
1. Scope
This policy applies to all research conducted at ACEP regardless of whether or not the research is externally funded. It includes research undertaken by postgraduate, graduate, and undergraduate participants except in exceptional circumstances.
2. Ownership
The most senior ACEP researcher associated with a research project is the Data Steward for that project and is ultimately responsible for research data management.
3. Obligations and Restrictions
Researchers are responsible for making themselves familiar with and adhering to legislation, contractual obligations, and funder policies governing research data. Where research involves the use of restricted data, researchers must abide by licenses or terms of use governing the data.
4. Planning
Data management plans are expected to be written for all new research projects, irrespective of whether submission of such plans is required when applying for research funding. Plans should address and attempt to recover the direct costs of managing research data from the funder where possible.
5. Collection
Collect or create information in a way that supports interoperability and information accessibility for downstream information processing, archiving and dissemination activities. Use machine-readable and open formats where possible with recognized data standards appropriate for data types.
6. Storing
Researchers must ensure that active research data are stored securely and protected from loss on one of the approved ACEP storage platforms. Data Stewards should ensure that access is not limited to a single person.
7. Describing
Researchers must provide sufficient metadata (descriptive information) and explanatory documentation about their research data to ensure that data are discoverable, understandable, and re-usable. This metadata should be linked to and managed alongside the data.
8. Distributing
A statement describing how and on what terms any supporting research data may be accessed must, if appropriate, be included in publications reporting publicly-funded research, and is recommended for publications reporting other research. To the fullest extent possible, data associated with a publication should be available for download and discovery at, or before, the time of publication.
9. Archiving
Research data that substantiates research findings, are of potential long-term value, or support a patent application must be retained after project completion, in alignment with university policy, in an archive for a minimum of 5 years after publication. Researchers should endeavor to ensure their research data is archived on a platform that will ensure long term access to their research data well beyond the minimum of 5 years of availability.
10. Registering
All data that are retained should be registered with the ACEP data inventory, whether they are hosted by the University or maintained elsewhere, even if access to the data is restricted.
11. Retaining
Research data that have been selected for retention must be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible, unless this would breach legislative, regulatory, contractual, ethical or other obligations, or where the cost of doing so would be prohibitive.
12. Licensing
Research data that are made available should not be assigned licences or terms of use that unnecessarily restrict their management, sharing or use by others.
If you have questions or see an area that can be clarified or improved in this policy please let us know on the data management issue tracker. This policy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and is derived from of the University of BATH Research Data Policy.