Research data
All data that is collected or generated within a research project constitutes research data. It can consist of measurements, statistics, source code, text-, image- and audio files, interviews or surveys. Research data is a valuable resource that should be handled with care throughout the research process.
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Plan for data management
Researchers and doctoral students at Stockholm University need to create a data management plan (DMP) that specifies how:
- all necessary permits, agreements, and data protection measures are in place before the project commences.
- research data is processed and stored in secure services during the project, with consideration for the information classification of the research data.
- research data is kept organized and well-documented.
- research data is handled in accordance with the FAIR principles and made as openly accessible as possible.
- research data and accompanying research information are preserved and archived after the project concludes.
The specific actions required for your data management will depend on your research data. You may need to contact the university’s research data management team, legal experts, information security function, ethics function, IT department, your head of department, and the department’s archivist.
The Swedish National Data Service provides practical advice on data management, including guidance on organizing and naming research data (folders, files, variables) right from the beginning, and choosing appropriate file formats for long-term preservation and accessibility.
Manage and store data
Stockholm University offers digital tools so that you as a researcher can securely handle, document, store, and analyze research data. The tools can also make it easier for you to make your research outputs more openly accessible.
You can find more information about secure storage in our service Sunet Drive/Nextcloud in the Service portal under "Research data".
Secure storage for research data
Sunet Drive/Nextcloud is a secure storage solution based on Nextcloud and Sunet's S3 storage in a private cloud. The storage offers the ability to both share and control access to research data within and outside Stockholm University. The provider, Sunet (Swedish University Computer Network), is part of the Swedish Research Council.
Currently, Sunet Drive/Nextcloud can handle file sizes up to 30 gigabytes.
More information about Sunet Drive/Nextcloud can be found in the Service Portal under the entry “Research Data”.
Tools for research data collection and analysis
Depending on your field of research many practical tools can help facilitate your work, such as survey tools or analysis software. Some tools are open source and therefore free to all, while others require a license. The IT department lists the tools the university offers under Software licenses.
Always ensure that the tools you use are secure for your type of research data. Avoid processing personal information in cloud services that have not been approved by Stockholm University.
Stockholm University strives to offer secure and efficient data management tools throughout the research process. If you lack a tool for your data management, please contact the Research Data Management Team. This provides the university with a basis to offer more services in the future.
Survey&Report - a survey tool available to all researchers
Tal-till-text - a transcription tool
Program licenses
Instructions for cloud services
Large scale data resources
Many research fields depend on large-scale data storage and processing capacity.
NAISS
The National Academic Infrastructure for Supercomputing in Sweden (NAISS) is the new infrastructure organization for high-performance computing, storage, and data services for academic users in Sweden.
The resources are available free of charge to Swedish researchers in all disciplines.
EuroHPC
Researchers from academia, research institutes, public authorities and industry established in Sweden can apply for and get access to the EuroHPC pre-exascale and petascale supercomputers. Applying to EuroHPC can be tricky, but EuroCC National Competence Center Sweden (ENCCS) can assist you with selecting an appropriate EuroHPC resource, writing a proposal, and getting access.
Access the EuroHPC super computing services
Short video about the EuroHPC application process
Publish data
According to the Open Science Policy and the accompanying Open Science Plan at Stockholm University, research data should be published with open access and in line with the FAIR principles to promote data reuse.
By publishing your research data or their metadata in a data repository they become more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), and can be made accessible as open as possible and as closed as necessary.
Connect your research data and scholarly publications using links. This can give you a citation advantage and make your work visible in statistical overviews.
Publish open and FAIR in a repository
There are major advantages to publishing research data in a data repository rather than sharing it informally on your webpage, with colleagues, or as a supplementary document to a published article.
Research data that you publish in a repository becomes a citable publication that is easy to find, download, understand, handle, and re-use. A repository can thus help make your research data more FAIR as it is:
- described and documented in an interpretable and standardized way, so that it can be correctly understood and reused.
- given a persistent identifier (PID, usually a digital object identifier, DOI), so that it can be persistently found, retrieved, and linked to other publications.
- given the usage license you deem appropriate (for instance CC-BY), to let others know what they are allowed to do with your research data and how you want to be cited.
Choose a research data repository
Research data need to be enriched with metadata to be understood and interpreted correctly. Metadata is information about when, how, where, by whom, and why research data were collected, and where they are located.
Domain-specific repositories often provide more detailed meta-data fields and utilize domain-specific vocabularies, which improves the material description. Generalist repositories may be advantageous in reaching a wider, cross-disciplinary audience.
The global service re3data provides a registry of research data repositories in most disciplines that can help guide you toward a suitable outlet for your research data.
Stockholm University offers publishing support when you choose to use the following repositories:
- Stockholm University Library Dataverse
- Stockholm University Figshare
- Swedish National Data Service, SND
- Stockholm University Library Zenodo
- The Bolin Centre Database for Climate and Earth System Data
The Research Data Management Team provides input on metadata and files to improve the documentation and FAIR-ness of your data, and to facilitate automatic preservation of the published material.
Some information can not be published with open access
Research data containing personal data or sensitive personal data, data that is protected by secrecy following the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Law (2009:400), or data that is limited by proprietary right or copyright is not to be published with open access.
Offentlighet och sekretess vid Stockholms universitet (saknas engelsk sida)
However, such data must still be made available "as open as possible and as closed as necessary"
Research data that cannot be published with open access is made available "as open as possible and as closed as necessary" at Stockholm University by publishing metadata, a description of the research data, openly available in SND without uploading any data files. The Research Data Management Team offers secure storage for the data files, with a permanent link between the SND metadata record and the data storage. The Research Data Management Team is also responsible for ensuring that the data files are preserved and made available, if requested, but only after secrecy examination and only to authorized persons.
If you publish metadata about research data with sensitive information in a data repository other than SND, then you are responsible for preserving and keeping the data files available. You must be able to deliver them if requested, but only after a secrecy examination and only to authorized persons.
Preserve and archive research data
Research data that underpin your research publications need to be accessible if someone authorized needs to verify your results and conclusions. Research data and other associated research documentation must be kept for at least 10 years; if they are of long-term value, they should be preserved. Research data containing personal or sensitive personal information does not constitute grounds for not archiving the material.
Common, open, and well-documented file formats are best suited for long-term preservation. The Swedish National Data Service provides a list of recommended file formats for text, images, and spreadsheets.
Read more about how and what you need to preserve in your research project under Archiving research information.
Re-using research data
There can be great scientific and socio-economic benefits from working with existing data, such as collected and published research data, register data, or openly available authority and cultural heritage data.
When you reuse data, you must pay attention to the possible license under which the data was made available, and how the data may be used further and must be cited. You also need to be able to detail where the primary data is stored, in case someone wants to review or repeat your study (in the event that your processed secondary data cannot be published).
For some data, the conditions for reuse are clearly defined (and may, for example, require ethical review and special information security measures). Other data can be freely downloaded and reused without restriction.
When you reuse data, you need to create a data management plan in cases where you process the data to such an extent that it can be considered a new data set. You are also recommended to make the new data set openly available (to the extent that the original source allows) and to preserve it together with other research project information upon completion.
Re3data.org - registry of repositories where research data is published openly
Research data management support and training
We offer individual advice and support, training, courses, tailored workshops, and webinars. Contact us if you as a teacher, primary investigator, supervisor or head of department are interested in learning more. Open events are advertised in the staff calendar.
Examples of recurring training:
- Workshops in Data/Library/Software Carpentry in collaboration with the KTH and KI libraries in Stockholm Trio.
- Open Science for PhD Students (5 ECTS) in collaboration with the English department. The course is open to PhD students from all faculties and higher education institutions.
The departmental research data network
We are developing a network to facilitate communication between researchers and the University administration. Each department is encouraged to appoint a contact person. Please contact us for more information.