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Research Data Management for Students: After the research

What do I do with the data after the research?

You must take care of your data even after you have finished your thesis. This is done either by storing them for a fixed period of time, or permanently, or by destroying them. You can also open your data or parts of it for re-use.

Personal data is usually destroyed after the thesis has been completed and approved. If you process personal data in your work, it is important that you inform the participants of your study about the possible re-use or disposal of the data. You must keep the promises you have made to the participants. For more information, see the section Personal data.

Always follow the terms and conditions agreed with the owner of the data.

Remember that you can only use the University's storage solutions and services as long as you are an attending student. After graduation, the right of use ends.

The University of Lapland does not have any guidelines for how long you should store your data after research.

Opening your data

You can open your research data or parts of it for re-use. You can make your data available in full, or you can set limits on the purpose or manner in which the data can be used. Please note that ethical and legal reasons may prevent or limit the opening of data.

Plan carefully already at the beginning what parts of the data can be opened and published.

  • Choose a suitable service for sharing and archiving your data in the early stages of research.
  • Check out the requirements for the archive or service you are about to choose.
  • Make sure that no reasons related to data protection, copyright or contracts, for example, prevent the data from being opened.
  • Describe and document the data carefully. Others must be able to understand your data in order to use it.
  • Anonymize the data if necessary.
  • Make sure your data gets a permanent identifier.
  • Define how the data can be used by licensing it. The University of Lapland recommends that open research outputs be licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0.

Research data can be opened and published through data archives. For example, the Finnish Social Science Data Archive accepts thesis data for archiving on a discretionary basis. The general EU funded service Zenodo can also be an option. The university of Lapland has no research data archive of its own.

Do you need help?

Discuss the opening and re-use of your data with your supervisor. If needed, you can ask for support by contacting the library at research.library(at)luc.fi.

You can find more detailed information about opening the data from the researcher's data management guide.