Leaving Aalto

Unfortunately, everyone leaves Aalto sometime. Have you considered what will happen to your data? Do you want to be remembered? This section currently is written from the perspective of a researcher, not a professor-level staff member, but if you are a group leader you need to make sure your data will stay available! Science-IT (and most of these resources) are focused on research needs, not archiving a person’s personal research data (if we archive it for a person who has left, it’s not accessible anyway! Our philosophy is that it should be part of a group as described above.). In general, we can archive data as part of a professor’s group data (managed in the group directories the normal ways), but not for individuals.

  • Remember that your home directories get removed when your account expires (we think in only two weeks!).

  • Data in the group directories it won’t be automatically deleted. But you should clean up all your junk and leave only what is needed for future people. Remember, if you don’t take care of it, it becomes extremely hard for anyone else to. The owner of the group (professor) will be responsible for deciding what to do with the data, so make sure to discuss with them and easy for them to do the right thing!

  • Make sure that the data is documented well. If it’s undocemented, then it’s unusable anyway.

  • Can your data be released openly? If you can release something as open data on a reputable archive site like Zenodo, you can ensure that you will always have access to it. (The best way to back up is to let the whole internet do it for you.)

  • For lightweight archival (~5 years past last use, not too big), the archive filesystem is suitable. The data must be in a group directory (probably your professor’s). Make sure that you discuss the plans with them, since they will have to manage it.

  • IDA (see above) could be used for archival of any data, but you will have to maintain a CSC account (TODO: can this work, and how?). Also, these projects have to be owned by a senior-level staff person, so you have to transfer it to a group anyway.

  • Finland aims to have a long-term archival service by 2017 (PAS), but this is probably not intended for own data, only well-curated data. Anyway, if you need something that long and it isn’t confidential, consider opening it.