Ms Janice Chan1
1Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Curtin University has a mature research data infrastructure. With the rapid increase of research data in storage, a key challenge to research data management at an institutional level is to identify what research data should be kept, how it can be efficiently stored and safeguarded, and what can be destroyed in accordance with legislation and policy.
The migration of Curtin’s central research data storage, the R drive, to a cloud solution in 2022 helped to address the issues related to cost, backup, and security. The next step is to establish a sound process for research data retention and disposal. The foremost challenge is that, while the university’s Data Management Planning (DMP) Tool captures information that can inform retention and disposal decisions, the DMP Tool and R drive are not integrated. In addition, there is no guidance to researchers on what they should do at the end of a research project to ensure the long-term accessibility of archived research data.
As a participating institution in the ARDC Institutional Underpinnings Program, Curtin is working on validating the retention and disposal element of the draft framework in the implementation phase of the program. The project outputs provide better user education, identify trigger points for reminding researchers of retention and disposal requirements, determine metadata required for retention and disposal, and develop a workflow for researchers to archive inactive research data.
This presentation will describe how Curtin University implemented the recommendations in the draft Institutional Underpinnings framework and share outputs and learnings from the project.
Biography:
Janice Chan is Manager, Library Research Services at Curtin University. She leads a team of specialists who provide support and advice to researchers on research data management, copyright, metrics and impact, strategic publishing, and the HDR writing programs.