Do We Need to Preserve Research Data?

Taina JääskeläinenFSD

Forskning – Arkiv – Forskning31 May 2007

Can researchers use their own data 10 years from now?

Collection time period?

Sampling procedure?

Why can’t I open the data?

Variable names?

Research data – current situation

• Most existing data sets in the hands of primary researchers

• A third in the department/unit

• Not in any database

• 10% have guidelines on preservation

Proportion of reusable data

30

6

15

16

34

0 10 20 30 40

Can't say

Over 75 %

51-75 %

20-50 %

Less than 25 %

Pro

po

rtio

n r

eu

sab

le

respondents (%)

Barriers to reusing existing data

• Insufficient documentation (54%)• Lack of informed consent (47%)• Confidentiality issues (43%)• Not relevant for current study topics (43%)• IT problems (e.g. obsolete format) (38%)• Other legal problems (31%)• Ethical problems (23%)

OECD Principles for Access to Research Data from Public Funding

• Openness

• Diversity

• New research

• New or alternative hypothesis and analysis methods

• New topics

• Education

Advantages for funders

• No overlapping data collection

• Financial benefits: data used more efficiently

Advantages for the scientific community

• Increased interaction and co-operation

• Verifiability, repeatibility

• Equality of access

• Improved teaching

• Improved research

Advantages for researchers

• Long-term preservation of own data

• More visibility

• Longitudinal research

• Cross-national research

• Comparative research

Researchers: barriers to openness

• Lack of informed consent

• Workload for preparing data for archiving

• Confidentiality issues

• Concern regarding future use of data

• Loss of competitive advantage

Data archives 1

• Anonymisation

• Produce and enrich metadata

• Access agreements, conditions of use agreements

• Copyright: embargo, permission to use

• Migration: use of standard formats

Data archives 2

• Support to data collectors and secondary users

• More visibility

• Study descriptions in English, data translations

• Cessda data portal: www.cessda.org

Finnish Social ScienceData Archive

• Acquires, processes, preserves and disseminates digital data

• Secondary use• Social sciences• National resource• Quantitative and qualitative• Research and teaching• Nearly 800 data sets

Opinions on openness of own data

1

8

15

43

33

0 20 40 60

Very negative

Fairly negative

Neither positive nor negative

Fairly positive

Very positive

respondents (% )

Opinions on the ways to preserve research data

22

38

65

76

18

27

14

15

60

35

21

9

0 % 20 % 40 % 60 % 80 % 100 %

Researchersthemselves

University departments/units

Data archives for eachuniversity

National data archivesfor different disciplines

good neither bad