Guidelines on RDM
Guidelines on RDM
- meet any statutory or regulatory obligations (records legislation, funding agency guidelines, contractual arrangements with research partners)
- meet the current needs of researchers
- meet the future needs of researchers where these can reasonably be anticipated
- satisfy expectations of the University in documenting research activity.
- Human ethics requirements and the nature of the consents you seek from participants will determine whether data can be re-used for future projects and in what ways.
- Technology-based decisions relating to storage media, software, and digital file formats might impact upon the length of time that data can be easily retrieved and used.
- Identifying issues like these around long-term and permanent retention is part of Data Management Plan.
- Files and documents are recorded digitally and saved in a storage system for future use.
- Data storage makes it easy to back up files for safekeeping and quick recovery in the event of an unexpected computing crash or cyberattack.
- Financial Information
- Medical Information
- Personal Information
- Academic Records
- Identifiable Human Subject Research
- Industry Secrets
- Patentable Research
This guide is intended to support the
| Data Type | Original Data Format | Recommended Formats |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Hand-written, docx, wpd, odt, rtf, txt, html, xml, pdf | xml, PDF/A, txt |
| Tabular Simple | csv, tsv, pipe-delimited, xls(x), ods, dif, xps | csv |
| Tabular Extensive | sav (SPSS), sas7bdat or xpt (SAS), dta (STATA) | csv, txt with setup file or associated script (r or m) |
| Database | mdb, dbf, sql, sqlite, db, db3, xml | xml, sqlite |
| Visual | static: pdf, jpeg, tiff, png, gif, bmp, moving: mpeg, mov, avi, mxf | PDF/A, tiff, JPEG2000, MPEG-4 | Audio | wav(e), mp3, mp2, aiff, wma, aac, dct, flac, ogg | wave,aiff | Image | JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg, .jp2) if original created in this format, GIF (.gif), TIFF other versions (.tif, .tiff), RAW image format (.raw), Photoshop files (.psd), BMP (.bmp), PNG (.png), Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF/A, PDF) (.pdf) | TIFF 6.0 uncompressed (.tif) |
As a researcher, you should identify the likely retention period for your data as early as possible in the research and ensure that requirements for retention and disposal are met.You must also ensure that actions and decisions taken during the project facilitate long-term or permanent retention for data with enduring value to the research community or of wider public interest.
Minimum retention periods
Your research data needs to be kept for as long as required to:
Disposal
The destruction of data must be irreversible with no chance of recovery later. Digital data should be destroyed by deleting or overwriting information, purging magnetic media through degaussing (exposure to a strong magnetic field), or destroying the physical media.
Paper can be shredded using secure shredding. Extra care should be taken with sensitive or confidential information where a secure paper destruction service must be used.
In all cases records relating to what was destroyed, when and how should be retained.
Planning for long-term and permanent retention
If you think that your data may be a candidate for long-term or permanent retention, you should be aware that decisions made at an early stage of the research project can limit your later ability to retain data in a usable form. For example:
Research data that is going to be retained permanently should be deposited in UiTM Research Data Repository.
(Source: Monash University, 2018)
What is Data Storage?
Types of Confidential Data
Ownership of Intellectual Property (IP)
Researcher should clarify ownership of and rights relating to research data before a project starts. Ownership and rights will determine how the data can be managed in the future, so these should be documented early in a project through data management planning.