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• Study IISH Guidelines for preserving research data

Costs: free
Author: SURFfoundation/IISH

This study followed researchers as they worked through the dynamics of data collection in online collaboration environments. Researchers concern themselves with the iterative process of collecting, processing, and analysing data, and publishing research results (or interim results). In the course of this process, research data – in various forms and versions – needs to be kept up to date, managed, and distributed during the successive stages of the project so as to validate the outcomes and research results.

A generic layered data model was worked out for collecting and archiving research data. The authors of the studies recommend that the infrastructure of a data archive should link up seamlessly with the researchers’ work environment. Because researchers are not only producers but also consumers of data archives, data archives cannot apply any selection criteria outside the research process. The research community is best served by linking up with it, and control of the research data is thus retained.


This study is one of three carried out in the framework of SURFfoundation’s SURFshare programme. The studies focus on how to determine what research data should be preserved for the long term and what data should not. The three studies are:
• Data Curation in Arts and Media Research (Leiden University)
• IISH Guidelines for preserving research data: a framework for preserving collaborative data collections for future research (IISG)
• Selection of Research Data; Guidelines for appraising and selecting research data (DANS and 3TU).
A brief summary of the three studies is available as well as a checklist “General Guidelines for Selecting Research Data to be Preserved”.

SURFshare_Collectioneren_Guidelines_IISH_DEF.pdf