Element 3: How Long will Data be Made Available
Question
Will shared scientific data be made available for at least as long as required by applicable data repository policies and/or journal policies?
Guidance for Response
A response of "Yes" is expected. "As long as required" may have different meanings in different contexts. It generally refers to a retention period for the shared data, or, a commitment to make it available via the repository through which it was shared for a certain amount of time.
Retention periods to consider (and thus, how long to make the data available) include:
- Institutional data retention periods
- Journal data retention periods, as outlined in their publication requirements
- Repository policies for data retention
Zenodo note: Zenodo's features meet the primary
Desirable Characteristics for All Data Repositories outlined by the NIH. These include issuing a unique persistent identifier (DOI), provenance, and long-term sustainability. Zenodo retains items for the lifetime of the repository. Per Zenodo's
General Policies page, this is currently the lifetime of the host laboratory CERN, which currently has an experimental programme defined for the next 20 years at least.