The rising tide of digital research data raises issues relating to access, curation and preservation for Higher Education Inistitutions (HEIs) and within the UK a growing number of research funders are now implementing policies requiring researchers to submit data management, preservation or data sharing plans with their funding applications. This study provides brief overviews of the potential benefits to HEIs of preservation of research data; issues that HEIs will need to consider when determining the medium to long-term costs of data preservation; and different service models.
The report also contains a framework and guidance for determining costs consisting of:
– A list of key cost variables and potential units of record
– An activity model divided into pre-archive, archive, and support services
– A resources template including major cost categories in TRAC; and divided into the major phases from our activity model and by duration of activity
– A series of case studies from Cambridge University, King’s College London, Southampton University, and the Archaeology Data Service at York University, illustrating different aspects of costs for research data within HEIs.
Overall the approach has focused on developing a framework for determining costs and the major deliverable from the study has been the costing framework. In addition case studies and specific work on costs provide valuable examples of research data costs. Given the emerging nature of the field, the limited time for the study, and sample size of case studies and interviews these must be regarded as illustrative examples of costs.