Preservation of research data

What to do with data that are not in active research use? Your research design, publication or funder may require the preservation of the data for a certain period of time. The nature of your data can also make it necessary to preserve them in usable form even for future generations.

No data left behind

Research data are generated through significant investment and long-term commitment. Since collecting and cleaning up data require a considerable amount of effort, not to mention money, it is important to keep such data for future use.

The University of Helsinki has two services for preserving research data: for retention periods ranging between 5 and 15 years, and for long-term preservation (25 years or more). Both services are curated, which means that they include a data selection process.

Research data are stored in Databank and Data archive in frozen form, which means that their content cannot be edited in neither service. If you need a service where data can be edited, check out the for solutions provided by the University.

The metadata of data stored in Databank and Data archive are published in Data catalogue.