Policies and standards affecting research data management
Understand your project and individual responsibilities
Multiple policies, legislation and standards will apply to use of research data and you will need to ensure that all are complied with.
The Project Leader/PI is ultimately responsible for ensuring legal and policy requirements affecting research data are met. A data manager will be responsible for setting out details of how data will be handled, used and shared based on direction from the project leader. Individual researchers will be responsible for ensuring they follow the planned approach.
It is essential to understand at the start of the project what polices, legislation and standards apply to the research. This is to ensure that the planned approaches to how a project will capture, store, use and ultimately share research data meet the requirements. Your allocated NERC Data Centre can provide guidance to help you plan an approach that ensures all expectations are met.
Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR
You will need to ensure the way you capture, store and use any personal information meets UK legislation.
Joint Code of Practice for Research (JCoPR)
The JCoPR sets out standards for the quality of science and the quality of research processes. Contractors who carry out research on behalf of Defra and other signatory organisations must follow these standards. This helps ensure the aims and approaches of research are robust. It also gives confidence that processes and procedures used to gather and interpret the results of research are appropriate, rigorous, repeatable and auditable.
UKRI Common principles on research data & Research Data Policies
UKRI has established common principles on research data across all research councils in the pursuit of open research resources. Each research council has its own data and sharing and management policies and guidance, which UKRI award holders must follow.
You are also expected to follow good research data management practices throughout your project.
Ownership of the data generated from the research funded by UKRI or our councils resides with the researchers or their institutions. They should maintain and manage copyright and intellectual property ownership of data so that underlying research materials remain as open as possible.
ISO 9001
ISO 9001:2015 specifies requirements for a quality management system when an organization:
- needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, and
- aims to enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.
All the requirements of ISO 9001:2015 are generic and are intended to be applicable to any organization, regardless of its type or size, or the products and services it provides.
NERC Data Policy
NERC has a well-established Data Policy that sets the ground rules that all those funded by NERC must follow in managing the data that they collect. The Data Policy details commitment to support the long-term management of environmental data and also outlines the roles and responsibilities of all those involved in collecting and managing environmental data. Central to the policy is that NERC-funded scientists must make their data openly available within two years of collection through a NERC data centre for long term preservation (unless agreed otherwise by the NERC data centre). The aim is that all NERC-funded data are managed and made available for the long-term for anybody to use without any restrictions, beyond citation of any data resources used in any publications produced.
NERC also recognises that model code and model data produced through NERC-funded research are valuable assets which should be preserved beyond the lifetime of the project. By preserving model code and data, other researchers can benefit from the outputs of previous NERC-funded research, and it makes the research process more transparent, auditable and reproducible.
Check if your NERC proposal requires an outline data management plan to identify data sets of long-term value. Successful grant holders must subsequently agree a full data management plan with a NERC Data Centre.