Research Data Support

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a living document, and is used to describe and facilitate how research data is handled through a research project. The document shall address, for example, the collection, documentation, processing, storage and archiving of data. Exactly what content should be included differs depending on the subject area, requirements from financiers and data types. It is becoming more common for research funders to require a data management plan when submitting the project application.

To support your work with data management plans, Linnaeus University provides a Word template to start from, see the heading Templates for Data Management Plans below.

More detailed information about data management plans can be found on SND's web page about data management plans.

Contact

The Research Data Support (DAU) can help you and your project getting started developing a data management plan. Contact dau@lnu.se.

For you who are conducting research at Linnaeus University, a Word template for data management plans is available.

When setting up your project and identifying what research questions to investigate, it is important to reflect on what kind of data you will need to carry out the research. The following is a support when it comes to processing personal data.

• Is personal data to be processed within the scope of the research?
• Will Lnu collect or gain access to data that can be considered personal data (for example, pseudonymized/coded data)?
• Will Lnu process so-called sensitive personal data (pseudonymized or open)?
• Will Lnu perform an analysis on behalf of others or another university?
• Is the project to be carried out together with another party or is Lnu the sole entity responsible for research/personal data controller?
• Is Lnu the personal data controller or personal data processor in the project?
• Are several parties personal data controllers individually or jointly?

See the checklist below for support for personal data controllers.

Research subjects have the right to receive information about how their personal data will be processed. The template below is a support for you as a researcher to correctly inform a research subject in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

If you have questions regarding, in particular, assessments of whether Lnu is personal data controller or processor, personal data processor agreements or about transfer to so-called third countries, you can contact the data protection officer via dataskyddsombud@lnu.se.

More information can be found on SND's page Research material with personal data.

If you are to process sensitive personal data in your research project, an approved ethical review from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority is required.

More information about ethical review in relation to the management of research data can be found on SND's web page on ethical reviews.

If you are planning a research project and have questions about research ethics, please contact the Ethical Advisory Board in South East Sweden.

Regardless of storage area, those who work with the data in the research project, and the responsible manager should have access to the files and folders that are stored. Your computer's local storage, USB flash drive, external hard drive and similar can be used as temporary storage for data during processing, but as main storage Sunet Drive is recommended.

Sunet Drive

Sensitive personal data: Yes
Personal data: Yes
Share data: within and outside Lnu
Backup: Yes

Sunet Drive is a national storage and file sharing service that is based on the Nextcloud interface and S3 storage on servers in Sweden. Sunet Drive was introduced at Linnaeus University in 2023 to facilitate the managing, storage and sharing of research data. Sunet Drive can be used both in your web browser and through the Nextcloud client that can be installed on your computer.

Apply for a storage space in Sunet Drive for your research project

Click here to order a Sunet Drive storage space (log in with staff account from Linnaeus University required).

The submitted application will be processed by the research data group (DAU), who will contact the project manager for the research project before the storage area is ready to be used.

Only research data and other information belonging to the research project are to be stored in Sunet Drive. If you need to store other types of information in your job, you are directed to local servers or other procured cloud storage services. See the page File storage at Linnaeus University - FAQ (Staff) in Serviceportalen for more information.

Log in to Sunet Drive with your staff account

https://lnu.drive.sunet.se

Guides and support

For more information on how to use Sunet Drive, see the guides on Sunet Drive in Serviceportalen.

All guides are also compiled in one document, Sunet Drive User Guide.

If you have questions or need help with Sunet Drive, please contact dau@lnu.se

S: – Local Server

Sensitive personal data: Yes
Personal data: Yes
Share data: only within Lnu
Backup: Yes

Storage on local servers at Lnu. Can also be accessed with Lnu login outside of Lnu's network.

Contact the designated person at your faculty/department to create folders and set permissions. See the page Contact persons who can order accounts and folders on S:.

Read more about backup at S: on the page File storage at Linnaeus University - FAQ (Staff) in Serviceportalen.

Read more about how you can access your files on S: at the page File storage P: and S: - FAQ (Staff) in Serviceportalen.

As an employee at Linnaeus University, you are responsible for ensuring that the information you process is handled correctly and securely. This means that your information should be stored in a secure place where it is only accessible to those who need it, that it is regularly backed up and cannot be changed or deleted by unauthorized users. Read more about this on the page Information security (in Swedish) at the Staff pages.

Primarily, research data should be stored in the storage solutions provided by the university. If you cannot use the university's solutions or need to use a cloud service with which the university does not have an agreement, contact your immediate manager. Read more about cloud services under the heading The use of cloud services at the university (Användning av molntjänster vid universitetet) (in Swedish) on the page Information Security (Informationssäkerhet) at the Staff pages.

Keeping order and structure of research data from the start of the project makes things easier both during and after the project when data is to be saved and perhaps archived. It is important to document things that are crucial for understanding the information over time, not least when research data is to be archived.

The document Guidelines for managing research documents describes what applies to the managing of research documentation, what types of data and documentation (applications, agreements, permits, etc.) are to be registered, archived, stored or disposed of both during and after the project. This is also described in the information management plan (in Swedish).

If you in the research project manage personal data and/or information that may be subject to confidentiality, and you pseudonymize this data and use code keys or code lists, the main recommendation is that code keys and pseudonymized data should not be stored in the same place. In addition to Sunet Drive, Linnaeus University's local server, S:, can be used to store research data and code keys. S: can only be used by people employed at Linnaeus University.

Contact the designated person at your faculty/department to create folders and set permissions on S:, see the page Contact persons who can order accounts and folders on S: on the Staff site. Read more about how you can access your files on S: at the page File storage P: and S: - FAQ (Staff) in Serviceportalen.

If the code key is only needed sporadically by a small number of people who all work in the same place, an alternative is that it is not stored digitally, but on paper in a locked cabinet.

For projects where people outside of Linnaeus University need to have access to and work with all the project's data, you can use Sunet Drive as the only storage option. When possible, the code key should later be separated from pseudonymized data and stored on S:. This can be done, for example, when the collection of data is complete and new information no longer needs to be added.

The IT department offers support in encrypting files. Please contact it-support@lnu.se for more information.

If you in your research project have designed a study to not collect sensitive personal data or personal data about violations of the law, and you do not intend to process such data, an ethics review is not needed. Should such personal data unintentionally be collected, these data can be excluded from the research material and the research may continue without ethical review. You do not need to make an extra ethics application for personal data that are not to be processed in the research project.

Read more at the Swedish Ethical Review Authority’s webpage Prerequisites for research on personal data with or without ethical review (in Swedish).

This means that if you in your project would collect sensitive personal data unintentionally by, for example, someone writing too much in a free text field in a survey response or sharing sensitive information on a video recording, you must separate these from the research data you intend to use in the research project.

In practical terms, you can move files containing sensitive data to a special folder with higher security in the form of limited access. If the sensitive data are part of the other material in, for example, a video recording, you move the entire video recording to a secure folder.

In the project, however, you do not have the right to delete unintentionally collected material as it is part of the background information and documentation of the data collection and the research process. The unintentionally collected information must be saved for as long as the data that are used in the research project. This is required to be able to show that, for example, a research person provided too much information during collection, that the project has taken this into account, separated the material from the data that should be analyzed, and retained other data for analysis.

Research conducted at Linnaeus University is to be regarded as part of the state agency, regardless of how the funding is provided. Therefore, research activities are subject to the principle of public access to information. This means that the Freedom of the Press Act's rules on official documents must also be applied to research documentation. In practical terms, this means that the research activities must generate satisfactory documentation and comply with rules for disposing and preservation.

Keeping research data well organized and well structured from the start of the project makes it easier both during and after the project when data is to be preserved. It is important to document things that are crucial for understanding the information over time, not least when research data is to be archived.

The document Guidelines for managing research documents describes what applies to the managing of research documents, the types of data and documentation that are to be archived, stored or disposed of both during and after the project. This is also described in the information management plan (in Swedish).

Research data may be disposed of no earlier than after 10 years after research results have been reported and published and when final financial reporting has taken place. Until then, the material must be stored securely at the department or faculty. When the retention decision has expired, the research data must be disposed of. It is the manager responsible according to the delegation order who makes the retention decision. This must be done in consultation with the researcher who is most familiar with the material and with the university archive.

Research data that are considered to:

• have a continued scientific value, within or outside of the research area
• be particularly comprehensive or unique
• be of great scientific historical, cultural historical or personal historical value
  or
• be of great public interest and has attracted considerable attention

are to be archived in the university archive where they will be preserved for all time.

When the retention decision has been made, the template must be filled in and then registered. The responsible researcher is most familiar with the material and can therefore best assess its future value for research. Decisions about preservation or disposal must be made in consultation with the university’s archivists. Retention decisions are made according to the delegation order.

Research data that are considered to

• have a continued scientific value, within or outside of the research area
• be particularly comprehensive or unique
• be of great scientific historical, cultural historical or personal historical value
  or
• be of great public interest and has attracted considerable attention

are to be archived in the university archive where they will be preserved for all time.

The principal investigator knows the material best and can therefore best assess its future value for research. Decisions on preservation or disposal should be made in consultation with the university's archivists, arkiv@lnu.se. Your immediate manager makes the formal decision and registers the retention decision with the university registar.

Research data may be disposed of no earlier than 10 years after research results have been reported and published, and when financial final reporting has taken place. Until then, the material must be stored safely at the department or faculty. If Sunet Drive is used, data should be stored there during the 10 year retention period. When the disposure period has expired, research data can be disposed of. Read more above under the heading Retention decision for research data at Linnaeus University.

An assessment must be made that takes into account the purpose of recording the interviews. If the purpose has been more than just transcribing the respondents' answers, it may be that the interviews should also be preserved. For example, are the audio files part of the analyzed material? What has been said in the ethical review approvand what has it allowed in the processing of the material?

We recommend that after the interviews have been completed, the research subjects are offered to read the transcribed interview to ensure that the researcher has understood the person correctly and provide an opportunity to develop and deepen their reasoning. In order not to risk the research subjects reading each other's interviews, the transcription of different interviews should be divided into separate documents.

You can publish research data in the Swedish National Data Service's (SND) research data catalogue through the DORIS tool. Data and its descriptions (metadata) are then reviewed by staff from the DAU at Lnu and by SND, which means that data published there is well described and follows the FAIR principles.

Log in with your Lnu account in DORIS to register and publish datasets.

Read more about publishing data in DORIS on SND's page Describe and share data.

Contact dau@lnu.se if you want help publishing data in DORIS.

There are also other services for publishing datasets, e.g. Zenodo and Figshare, but these datasets are not reviewed in the same way as in DORIS and may not be as well described.

No. Personal data must be anonymised (de-identified) before published in the SND research data catalogue. Psedonymized data, where individuals can still be identified using a code key, cannot be published in SND catalogue.

Read more about personal data in research on SND's page Research material with personal data.

Research data does not need to be published until the research project is completed, but it is also possible to publish data from ongoing projects in SND research data catalogue.

There are several reasons for publishing the research project's data. For example, published datasets contribute to:

• making research more visible both inside and outside the research community.
• increased transparency in research.
• increased opportunities for new research based on the same dataset.

Several scholarly journals have begun to request that the authors of the article make the data that forms the basis for the results in the article openly available.

There are higher demands for openness and transparency in publicly funded research as we work towards an open science system. Read more about this work on the Swedish Research Council's page Open access to research data – vision and guiding principles.

No, not all research data can be made completely open to everyone. Reasons may be that the data contains:

• personal data, sensitive or confidential information
• information that is copyrighted by someone else
• trade secrets or financial information.

However, information about the dataset, so-called metadata, can always be made available, for example in SND's research data catalogue.

Datasets that has already been published can be found, for example, in the SND research data catalogue and in the EOSC Resource Hub.

For a list of more databases, see SND page International data. See also re3data.org (Registry of Research Data Repositories), which contains both general and subject specific databases from all over the world.

Contact dau@lnu.se for help with searching for datasets.

Work is underway both nationally and within the EU for a transition to an open science system. In Sweden, the Swedish Research Council has been tasked with developing guidelines for how this transition should be implemented, and the goal is for such a system to be in place by 2026.

Linnaeus University's DAU consists of staff from the Executive Office, the University Library, the IT Office and the Office of External Relations. The DAU is run in collaboration with the Swedish National Data Service (SND) and a network of DAU at other universities.