NEWS The university currently lacks sufficiently robust solutions for research data storage. The Vice-Chancellor has therefore decided that a university-wide solution for research data storage needs to be developed urgently. Research data must be stored both during an ongoing project and, after completion, be able to be stored and archived for at least 10 years.
At present, there are various storage solutions that have been developed within different parts of the university, and it can be difficult for researchers to understand where and how research data can and should be stored at Umeå University. The new joint solution will likely consist of several different parts, and it may be based on existing storage resources within the university, national services such as those offered by the Swedish Research Council via Sunet, and entirely new solutions developed solely for Umeå University or in collaboration with other higher education institutions. The new solution needs to meet both the researchers' needs and the security requirements that are set for the storage of different types of research data.
Thomas Olofsson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, leads the working group for the new solution. The group consists of members from the Council for Infrastructure as well as representatives from the Unit for IT Support and Systems Development (ITS), HPC2N and SciLifeLab Site Umeå.
The working group, which will be guided by researchers’ needs for storage services, has concluded that a clearer division of responsibilities is needed regarding decisions and handling of data storage at the university, and this is also included in the assignment.
The first step will be for the group to produce a plan for the work to develop proposals for solutions, which is to be completed no later than 31 May 2026.
In the second step, the actual proposal for university-wide solutions for research data storage will be developed. Here, more people with, for example, technical, legal and archiving expertise will join, as well as individuals with experience from similar projects. The proposal must also include how a new solution will be financed.
Thomas Olofsson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research.
ImageHans Karlsson“A well-functioning technical support and good working methods for research data storage are essential for university researchers to have the conditions required to conduct successful research, while meeting the requirements of legislation and research funders. This is a very important and urgent issue”, says Thomas Olofsson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research.
Umeå University has launched a research data registry that helps research groups keep an overview of their research data – even for older projects. The registry serves as a catalogue where researchers register their projects and describe what type of data exists, how the data have been collected and where they are stored.