Sharing and preserving your data

Data sharing

Sharing research findings and research data allows others to build upon research already conducted. In the health sciences, this can help to increase the translation of research into practice and improve patient care. For a number of ethical, legal, and privacy reasons, sharing data from clinical research tends to be more complex than sharing research data from other disciplines, such as life sciences.

You may need ethics approval to share data. Additional approvals may need to be sought to re-use existing data. Check with the HNELHD Research Office.

Practical Guidance on data sharing from the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).

Data preservation

Funders, institutions and publishers will have strict requirements specifying how data should be preserved long-term. It is important to check these requirements on acceptance of funding.

Values underpinning the preservation of data are:

  • Unique data should be stored in such a way it cannot be replaced or replicated
  • Data should be verified by the researchers as authoritative and correct to support sound research
  • Legal requirements are complied with, eg. Copyright

The following organisations provide guidance on preservation formats and best practice for data storage.

Information on accessing, reusing, and citing research is also available from the UoN Manage Data Libguide.

Disposal of data

Disposal of digital research data: Data disposal (also called destruction or disposition) is the process of rendering your data unreadable. You may need to dispose of your data once your project is complete or has reached its retention period to ensure privacy and security or comply with government or institutional regulations.  

Disposal of physical research data: Placing physical research data items in a physical bin or shredding them does not ensure that they are adequately disposed of. HNELHD has secure document disposal bins that can be used to dispose of paper-based research data appropriately.