RDSS Project end of project life policy

From July 2021, we will be making some changes to how we deal with files stored in the Research Data Storage Service (RDSS) beyond the official end date of a project.

In order to manage data more effectively and keep the costs of the service manageable, whilst meeting the data management requirements of the major research funders and UCL’s Research Data Policy, we will in future begin archiving data in projects that have come to an end.

Project PIs are already notified when a project is nearing its conclusion and asked to either extend the project or start thinking about what data needs to be preserved longer-term. From July, projects will be flagged as ‘closing’ when they reach their official end date. There will then be a 3-month grace period during which the project team can publish/delete/move date. After this, a project will be marked ‘closed’ and write access to the storage space will cease, although project staff will still be able to read files for another 10 months. 13 months after a project end date, assuming no extension has been requested, any data left in the project space will be archived. Archived data will be retained for a minimum of 10 years beyond the project end date at no cost to its creators.

Archived data will continue to be available to the team that created it on request, but it may be a matter of days rather than seconds to access the files

Historic Projects

Over the coming months we will be working through historic projects in RDSS that concluded before July 2021. We will send emails to PIs of these projects asking whether they would like to reactive them or whether they are happy to have their project space to be closed and any data in them archived.
Please be aware that you can review any projects of which you are a member, and request an extension yourself(if before expiry), via the RDSS Web Portal at https://storageadmin.rd.ucl.ac.uk/. You will need to be on campus or connected to the UCL VPN to access this site. If the project has expired, you will need to email us with a new end date.

If you would like any clarifications regarding this new policy, please let us know via researchdata-support@ucl.ac.uk

Related guides & other info

RDSS Access Guide

Help & Support

For further help and assistance you can contact researchdata-support@ucl.ac.uk