News
Concerns about repositories with data hosted on centers in the US: practical recommendations
Some data repositories managed by US Government agencies are now ‘under review’, including those used by WUR researchers. Concerns have been raised about the continued access and availability of research data in repositories with data centers located in the US. In this news item, the Research Data Management support team offers practical recommendations to ensure continuity of public access to your research data.
Scientific data repositories under review
Some data repositories managed by US Government agencies, e.g. repositories from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are now under review by the US Government. These include repositories used by WUR researchers, such as Sequence Read Archive, Protein Data Bank and MassIVE. Concerns have been raised about the continued access and availability of research data in these repositories.
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Dutch Research Council (NWO), Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) and the IT cooperative of education and research (SURF) are working on securing research data from amongst others climate and gender studies. See also this NOS news item.
Practical recommendations
Currently, there is no official advice from WUR regarding the use of US repositories. However, we do have practical recommendations:
Publishing in repositories with data on US data centers?
- When publishing in a repository where data is hosted on US data centers, be aware that for data repositories managed by US Government agencies, it is currently unknown how data access and availability will be impacted.
- Ensure continuity of access to the data, by also having a copy of the data archived locally (e.g. Yoda, W:drive).
- The location of the data determines under which data protection law it falls. As such, research data containing personal data should not be archived in US based repositories.
- Consider publishing in a repository with data centers based in the EU.
Data already in a repository with data on US data centers
- Whether it concerns data published by yourself or reused data, ensure continuity of access to the data. For example, by storing the data locally.
Alternative data repositories
- Alternative (WUR Library supported) repositories, such as DANS Data Stations, 4TU ResearchData and Zenodo, can be found via the WUR repository finder and on this page about publishing your research data.
Support
For any questions or support, please contact data@wur.nl