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Research Data Management @ Camosun

This site supports the culture of research at Camosun College. Paying specific attention to research data management, it describes the current research culture data stewardship practices and it provides a roadmap for promoting best practices for research

Data storage and deposit

Data storage occurs throughout a research project as you collect, clean, and analyze your data.  While data storage can include long term storage, data deposit describes the more specific final step of storing your data and metadata in a repository for secondary researchers to access. This guide offers considerations and suggestions for managing your data through these two contexts.

Data storage

During active data gathering and analysis, it is vital to regularly back up your files. Computers fail or may be hacked, with serious repercussions.  While the locations of your backups needs to be convenient, so you use them, those locations also needs to be secure, especially if you are working with sensitive files.

The rule of 3-2-1 provides a useful guide to backing up your data: Store 3 copies of your data and documentation in at least 2 storage media, with 1 of those media housed off-site.

Encryption

Encryption is a process of securing digital information so that it is only readable by people with the correct authorization. Typically this authorization is a password. Medium or high risk data (containing confidential or individually identifiable information) stored on a device connected to the internet should be encrypted. Data stored on a cloud storage platform must be encrypted.

Storage options for solo research

  • PC or laptop: Simple, flexible, and usually indispensable for day to day storage. But hard drives fail and computers can be stolen. Always have a bare minimum of one back up set of files.
  • External storage (USB thumb drive, portable hard drive, CDs/DVDs): These are convenient and affordable options that may serve your need in the short term, but you should not rely on them. The storage devices can be lost or stolen - especially thumb drives - and the formats themselves are unreliable. If you need to use one of these options - for example if you are without wi-fi access during field work - follow the care and handling instructions of the media carefully, encrypt the files, regularly check your files to see that they work and are complete, and make sure to make new copies on different hardware over time.
  • Commercial cloud storage - Services like Dropbox or Google Drive provide free cloud-based storage with automated syncing and (sometimes) data encryption. These tools are not appropriate for sensitive data, though, and the data protection licenses for these commercial services can be complicated or unsatisfactory - especially when the servers are located outside of Canada.
  • College's networked drives:
    • OneDrive cloud storage - OneDrive access is provided to Camosun community members free of charge. Camosun users can login to office.com with their Camosun ID and password to access. OneDrive is a reliable option if you are working on a project on your own, but you should not house sensitive files there. If you really need to, though, at least encrypt them.

Storage options for collaborative research:

  • Rapid Access Service – Available to Compute Canada users with relatively small datasets, Rapid Access Service is a file storage and syncing solution that works well for collaborative research. Principle Investigators can create an account and then sponsor their research collaborators make accounts. Users needing more storage than is available though Rapid Access Service can apply for storage in one of Compute Canada's Resource Allocation Competitions.)
  • Open Science Foundation – https://osf.io/ - Free collaboration platform to collect, organize, document and share projects, including files, data, code and protocols. OSF projects can be made public or private. Anyone can sign up for an OSF account and collaborators can be added to projects with differing levels of permissions set by the project owner. This tool is not recommended for confidential or sensitive data. Canadian accounts have their data saved on Canadian servers by default, but user information, wiki content, comments, etc  are stored in the USA.

Data deposit

At the conclusion of your research project, you can deposit your final dataset and its documentation into a data repository. Data deposit may be required by funders or by journal publishers, so that other researchers can replicate, reproduce, or build on your work. But you should also consider sharing your data and documentation because it increases the value and the profile of your work. Your data is a valuable research output that provides your research community with deeper and different value than the articles or chapters or books you might generate from your data.

Data repositories are online services purpose-built to handle the special considerations of storing data. Data repositories may be discipline specific – in the field of chemistry, for example – or they may be run by a journal publisher or a research funding body.

If the location of your data deposit is not mandated by your funder or publisher, choosing where to deposit your data should be driven by increasing the possibility for discovery of your data by other researchers. How easily will other researchers, looking for data like yours, be able to find it? If you are looking for help with this decision, please contact the Camosun library [insert mailto link] for help.

Discipline-specific repositories are developed and managed by research communities. Storing data in a discipline-specific repository may improve the likelihood of discovery. A useful tool for finding discipline-specific repositories around the world is re3data.org. Search Re3data for your chosen discipline to see what repositories exist.

If you are not interested in a discipline-specific repository, you may prefer an open, general purpose repository such as:

Alternatively, you can deposit your data in Camosun's Institutional Repository, CCspace. While CCspace is not purpose-built to hold data, it is certainly a viable option with the added benefit that it connects your work to the College.