You have put in a lot of time and effort to collect your material, so why not take good care of it!
If you make the data you collect understandable, others can also use the data. This means adding metadata to your material and ensuring that the material remains usable. Your material must also be in a file format that can be read without special devices or software.
Data destruction must not be done by accident but always by choice.
Likewise, data are not preserved automatically and inadvertently. Data can easily and quickly decay or become useless if attention is not paid to storage.
As devices and software quickly become outdated, measures such as the following must be adopted in data storage:
Data can be published in open data archives, such as the following:
Take the following into account when opening or publishing data for others to use:
You can search for interesting data resources in data archives.
If you use data produced by someone else, you must cite the source. An example of a data citation from FSD:
Data must not be destroyed accidentally. Both the preservation and destruction of data must be planned.
Simply deleting the data is not an adequate way to destroy sensitive data!
Examples of safe ways to destroy the data on a drive:
As a rule, all personal data must be destroyed, for example after the completion of your master’s thesis. If your material contains personal data, discuss their destruction or preservation with your teacher or supervisor.