Managing your research data
Research data management is an integral part of the research process and aims to make it as efficient as possible.
In these pages you will find practical support to help you meet the four challenges of planning (DMP), collecting and organising, storing and securing, and archiving and sharing your data.
An introduction will give you a better understanding of what research data management is, why it is important to address it in your research, who is responsible for it, and what costs, if any, need to be taken into account.
Data management
Research data management is "the part of the research process that deals with organisation and handling of research data, including data management planning, structured storing, description, curation, preservation and provision of metadata and complementary algorithms, code, software, and workflows, and compliance with internal, national and international privacy legislation." (OECD, 2021).
It takes into account the entire data life cycle as well as the global context of the research (ethical, informational, IT/technical, legal, etc. issues). In addition, it ensures compliance with the current requirements of universities, public funders, scientific editions and current regulations and legislations.
The way in which data are managed varies according to the type of research project (individual or collective, national or international, public or private funder, etc.) and according to the data themselves (their nature, type, mode of collection and production, processing, analysis, etc.).
The data life cycle
Research Data Management involves several stages, which together make up the research data lifecycle. Good research data management involves applying good practice at each stage of the data life cycle
Why managing your research data ?
Managing your data allows you to :
- Save time : by planning your needs via a Data management plan you will save time, resources and the quality of your research.
- Increase the impact of your research : by sharing your data, your number of citations and future collaborations will potentially increase.
- Preserve your data : by depositing your data in a repository that complies with FAIR principles, you guarantee the durability of your work, its possible reuse and recovery.
- Maintain the integrity of your data : by managing and documenting your data throughout your project, you act in a responsible and transparent manner.
- Meet donor requirements : many funders require a repository of research data from the projects they fund.
- Facilitating new discoveries : Sharing your data promotes innovation and the creation of new data.
- Supporting the openness and dissemination of knowledge : disseminating scientific knowledge allows the creation of new knowledge.
Liability
Generally, the management of research data is the responsibility of the researchers who collect and produce the data.
However, many other people are involved in the research process to ensure data integrity, quality or security. It is therefore crucial to clearly define and assign, at the very beginning of the project, the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders, such as :
- Team members involved in the analysis, collection, creation, aggregation or processing of data, for example.
- External collaborators and partners for specific tasks (e. g. translation, transcription).
- Support staff (e.g., administration, research project management).
- Data center that provides tools and solutions for data backup, security and storage.
- Information specialists (e. g. archivists, librarians, data curators/managers) responsible for access, processing, availability, long-term preservation and enhancement.
- Legal advisors for legal aspects (e. g. patents, contracts, copyright and intellectual property).
- University leadership for the adoption of a general framework, specific policy, strategic vision and resources for implementation.
- Trainers in support of researchers and doctoral students.
Data Stewards at UNIL
To help you manage your data, in 2022 UNIL created temporary Data Stewards to support researchers with questions or problems relating to the management of research data. Click here to find the contact persons in your Faculty.
Who bears the costs of data management ?
The costs involved in managing and sharing research data vary from one research project to another, and are sometimes very significant. It is therefore useful to anticipate them in advance when planning the project and drawing up the Data Management Plan (DMP).
Costs borne by UNIL
Directive 4.5 sets out the following principles in Article 16: Invoicing for the archiving of research data:
1 The costs of preparing research data prior to archiving (cleaning, organisation, annotation) are the responsibility of the IP. They may be covered by the Project or the research funding body, depending on the rules laid down by the latter.
2 The costs of archiving research data are borne by UNIL.
3 A copy of the archived research data may be put back into storage mode at the IP's request. The IP is billed for this service.
SNSF subsidies
In Article 2.13 of the General Regulations for the Payment of Subsidies, the SNSF sets out the following principles:
1 The costs of making available research data collected, observed or generated with the aid of SNSF subsidies are chargeable under the following conditions:
the research data is archived in recognised scientific databases (data repositories) that comply with the FAIR principles and are not intended for commercial use; and
the costs relate specifically to the processing of research data with a view to archiving and to the actual archiving in databases in accordance with letter a.
2 The costs charged to a grant must relate to the archiving of data that has a thematic link with the research funded by the SNSF.
3 As a general rule, a maximum of CHF 10,000 may be charged to each grant.
4 The costs must already be taken into account when the application is submitted. In mySNF, the SNSF's additional instructions on the provision of research data must be observed, particularly with regard to the submission of data management plans.
A video introduction
Useful guides
-
Data Management Expert Guide
(CESSDA ERIC, online)
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Quick guide to research data management
(HES-SO, 2023)
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Guide to good practice in research data management
(l'Atelier Données - CNRS, 2023)
Cost calculators
Find below some answers to the most recurrent problems related to the management of research data at UNIL.
If you have not found the information you are looking for, do not hesitate to contact UNIRIS or the faculty research consultants.
FAQ - General questions
Regardless of where the data are stored and regardless of the storage medium, any data created or modified as part of the professional activity of a UNIL employee is protected by copyright but belongs to UNIL. This means that for any use other than for scientific and academic purposes, the agreement of the Management is required (e. g. for commercialization). More information.
In the event of the departure of a group leader (Principal Investigator), a copy of all data created or modified during the professional activity must be returned to the dean's office of his faculty (directive 4.5 Art. 19 al. 1) regardless of the degree of confidentiality, accompanied by the information necessary for their understanding and management. To do this, we recommend saving them to the NAS storage space. In case of commercial use, the prior agreement of the UNIL Management is required.
If desired, the IAP may request, through its faculty, permission to take a copy of the research data of its research group. In case of agreement of its faculty, an assignment contract between UNIL and the institution hosting the IP is established and signed in accordance with directive 4.1 of the UNIL Directorate on the signing of research contracts (assignment contract). If personal data are involved, the relevant provisions are reserved.
The Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for ensuring that the research data of his/her research group is managed throughout its life cycle, from its creation or receipt to its destruction or archiving, in compliance with the applicable legislation and UNIL guidelines or, where data is received from a third party, in accordance with the agreed contractual terms;gislation and UNIL directives or, where the data is transferred from a third party, in accordance with the agreed contractual conditions (Directive 4.5 Art. 10 al.1).
UNIL encourages employees to backup all their professional data generated in the course of their work at UNIL on the University's institutional infrastructure (directive 4.5 Art. 8 al. 2). To this end, the UNIL Computer Centre (Ci) provides a NAS storage server.
UNIL's Isilon NAS server is a secure and robust storage service that guarantees the security and durability of your data. This network storage server is available for all UNIL contract employees and offers a high availability rate. It is divided into two distinct trees - research and administrative - which make it possible to organize the data according to their nature.
Since June 2019, the UNIL Computer Centre has strengthened its research services at the University by creating the Division of Computing and Research Support (DCSR). This unit is competent to advise researchers and provides them with new infrastructures for the storage and processing of research data.
The RESEARCH NAS server (nas.unil.ch\RESEARCH) is dedicated to storing research data organized by project for each Principal Investigator (PI). HCP infrastructures allow researchers to do scientific computation.
To benefit from these resources, IPs must complete the DCSR application form and, if applicable, submit a Data Management Plan (DMP) when requesting storage space related to a research project.
These services are subject to a charge and their use is invoiced to IPs according to the annual fee schedule (authenticated UNIL access) established by the UNIL Computer Centre.
The use of services in the Cloud must meet the legal requirements of UNIL. In addition, any use of these services is the sole responsibility of the user, who fully assumes the risks, knowing that no assistance is offered by the Data Center.
The University allows the use of third-party storage services provided that the data is stored in Switzerland (directive 6.9, art. 5). If the data is stored abroad, the data must be encrypted and the encryption key must be stored in Switzerland.
Unfortunately, most known services do not meet these criteria (e. g. Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, etc.). SWITCHDrive is currently the only one to meet the required conditions. For more information, please refer to the Computer Centre (Ci) documentation on SWITCHDrive.
However, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that the use of services in the Cloud may involve risks for your data :
- The service provider may modify his service at any time (service interruption, change in price, etc.).
- In the event of data loss, no assistance is provided by the Data Center.
- Data may be read and used by third parties (foreign legislation is often more flexible in terms of data protection).
To the pages dedicated to storing your data at UNIL.
Since October 2017, each request to the SNSF must include a Data Management Plan (DMP), as well as projects submitted to the H2020 funding programme.
It is also planned that each request for storage space at the DCSR will be accompanied by a DMP.
UNIRIS has developed a Data Management Plan template for UNIL researchers and provides personalized advice.
Training courses are organised via the Graduate Campus on DMP writing and Open Access publishing. To consult the calendar of proposed activities and register , we invite you to visit their website.
Online tools are also available to researchers: the SNSF framework is available on MyFNS and the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (SIB) has created a Data Management Plan generato r compatible with SNSF requirements.
Several projects are underway at university level to answer these questions (see CRUS ). Indeed, even if it is very tempting to use a program downloaded from the Internet that would meet the needs of a group of people, management very quickly exceeds the resources (financial and human) and knowledge (legal, computer, etc.) of a single research group, or even a department.
We observe that more and more users interested in replacing the paper laboratory notebook want to make the management of the different data carriers more efficient or are looking for stock management solutions for the equipment used in the laboratories.
To meet this need(s), the FBM IT Department has tested several software packages and is in very close contact with the EPFL Faculty of Life Sciences, which has already set up a system.
The SWITCHFileSender web application allows you to send files of up to 50GB to a list of recipients of your choice (info on the IT Center website).
After publication, data produced in the course of research must be kept secure for at least 10 years (directive 4.2, art. 2.4). Responsibility for the appropriate storage of data rests with the research project manager.
In the event of a patent application and at the request of the Technology Transfer Office (PACTT ), UNIL's patent data will be kept at least for the duration of the patent (20 years) (directive 4.5 Art. 15 al.2).
Data related to a publication must be deposited on a non-commercial repository, subject to other requirements formulated by the research funding body (directive 4.5 Art. 15 al.3).
Data not related to a publication can be archived on a Ci infrastructure and/or on a non-commercial repository. The decision to file is the responsibility of the IP (directive 4.5 Art. 15 al.4).
FAQ - Questions related to SNSF
Since October 2017, it has been mandatory to include a Data Management Plan (DMP) with each request. The SNSF provides a DMP in the account of each researcher on MyFNS.
More information available on our dedicated pages.
In accordance with Article 44 of the General Regulations on Subsidies of the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ownership of research data initially collected or created at UNIL in the context of research financed by the said Swiss National Science Foundation is attributed to UNIL, regardless of the status of the collaborator who conducted the research (directive 4.5 Art. 5 al.3).
The link to the data is to be entered in mySNF, with some metadata, including DOI. The name of the chosen InfoStore is also to be specified. The data itself must not be uploaded to mySNF.
The data must be made available at the same time as the corresponding publication. If publication takes place after the end of the project, the link to the data must be indicated at that time and therefore not necessarily at the end of the project as such.
The aim of the SNSF's Open research Data policy is to promote the impact, transparency and reproducibility of research results. To this end, the aim is that these data should respect the FAIR data principles and can be accessed later. As the SNSF has signed the DORA declaration, the creation of databases is also an output to be taken into account in the evaluation process. The data are not archived at the SNSF but are made available on data repositories that comply with FAIR data principles. As the links to the data are included in the mySNF output data, they will be accessible in particular on the SNSF P3 database .
FAQ - Answers to the concerns of the researchers
Data management, such as metadata allocation, repository management and data retention activities, obviously have a cost, but the benefits far outweigh these costs. Repeating the research to obtain the same data is expensive. In addition, this is impossible in many cases because the researchers, subjects, test conditions, etc. are no longer there. Maintaining a reliable and orderly framework to protect the considerable investments made by institutions in the creation of research data represents a relatively modest cost compared to the prohibitive cost of recreating such data.
from Data Management Toolkit : trousse de sensibilisation réalisée pour l’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC)
Good data management principles are not incompatible with those governing intellectual property and data ownership. Researchers may choose to restrict access to their data in order to maximize their professional and economic benefits by postponing the release of data until the patent is published or enforced, or by using a non-commercial use license for the data. The OECD recommends that measures that promote access and exploitation for non-commercial purposes while protecting commercial interests, such as deferred or partial release of data or voluntary licensing mechanisms, be taken into account. Such measures can enable key participants to make full use of research data, without unnecessarily restricting access to it
from Data Management Toolkit : trousse de sensibilisation réalisée pour l’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC)
The best way to protect the confidentiality of personal information is through anonymity. If the data stored and made accessible are anonymous, then no problems of opening and reusing the data.
Well-established procedures exist to ensure anonymity of data and researchers can consult with the Coordinator for Ethical Issues at Unil to determine whether and how to anonymize data containing personal information so that they can share it.