FAQ research data

Research data is the information you as a researcher collects and/or processes to analyse as part of a research study. Depending on your subject, data may include measurement results, interviews, audio recordings, video, images or text.

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a formal document that describes how data materials should be handled during a research project and what should happen with this data afterwards.

Open access to research data is part of a common EU transition to an open science system. Many research funders require you to write a data management plan and that data should be made available after the end of the project. Some journals want you to make your data open for review during the peer-review process as well as for data to be attached to the article.

Open access to research data contributes to increased transparency in research as it is easier to access the data on which studies are based. As a researcher, you have the potential to access existing data, which will save you time and money. The University is given a clearer mandate to securely preserve and make research data available. Laws and agreements governing which data can be disclosed should still be respected.

Data should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary.

You can always contact our support function called DAU (Data Access Unit) with questions about research data. The support function consists of librarians, archivist, IT staff and legal counsel. We can help you set up a data management plan, support information classification of your data, answer legal questions and more. Write to researchdata@miun.se and we'll answer you soon!

We recommend that you use the DMPonline tool to write your plan. There you will find ready-made templates to fill in. You can update your plan during the project and have it reviewed by the DAU.

FAIR means that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Establishing a data management plan is the first step in the process of managing research data in accordance with FAIR principles.

Metadata is structured and descriptive information about data.

Metadata are available of various types:

• Descriptive — for example, title, author
• Administrative — e.g., file format, rights, license
• Structural — for example, persistent identifiers such as DOI

For research data to be found and used by others, it is important that you write down enough metadata. An outside researcher without prior knowledge of your project should be able to gain an understanding of your material through metadata and determine whether this is data that may be interesting to use in a project. It is good to start with this already at the beginning of a research project as it can be difficult to recover metadata to large amounts of data at a later stage.

It can be a great advantage to use a metadata standard. A metadata standard is a set of rules that determine how metadata should be described and categorised. Different research disciplines may have different metadata standards.

In social sciences, the metadata standard DDI is often used, which is also recommended by SND and is used in their input forms. Here you can find several different metadata standards based on subject discipline.

Depending on what your data contains, MIUN recommends the following:

• Vault (sensitive information that can be shared internally and externally)
• SharePoint and OneDrive (non-sensitive information that can be shared)
• Directory on the server (sensitive and non-sensitive information that can be shared internally)

Archiving responsibility falls on the higher education institution that is appointed as the principal at the start of the project, which is either stated in the data management plan or another agreement.

Primary data should either be preserved forever or deleted after a certain period of time, and to determine which one, you need to look at whether the material meets certain criteria. Contact the archivist for guidance.

If the documents are to be preserved, they must be stored in one of our archives. The archive also appreciates receiving the documents if they are to be deleted, as they must be available for such a long time that the archive is the safest place for storage.

If the documents are received/prepared on paper, they must be archived on paper in one of our archive premises. If, on the other hand, the documents have been received/prepared electronically/digitally, they must be archived in our e-archive.

There is more information about the management of research documents on our website and in Mid Sweden University's information management plan

MIUN has access to GitLab, ask INFRA and they can help you.

That’s the lead researcher. Who this is you decide, it can be you who write the plan, a supervisor or doctoral student.

Log in to DORIS via this link. A directory entry in DORIS will provide you a DOI. If you have written a data management plan, start from what is in it to fill in the fields in DORIS. Once you have finished writing, your directory entry will be reviewed by librarians and staff from SND.

In the 2016 Research Policy Bill, the Government stated the objective that research data from all publicly funded research should be as open as possible. The Government tightened the target for 2020 in Bill 2020/21: by stating the year 2026 as the final date for the transition to open science in Sweden. This means that the research conducted with grants from the state shall make the project’s research data as open as possible and as closed as necessary.

The development of research data requires considerable resources, both time and money. By enabling the sharing of research data, these resources are used more efficiently. Open access to research data also opens for more scrutiny of research results. When reviewing research becomes easier to carry out, by being able to easily download data from repositories or by sending a request to the relevant university, the quality of the research is strengthened.