Bad practice of research data management

Storage location & backup is an important component of adequate RDM. This can be illustrated with the following RDM cases. In 1970, several offices in Behavioral Sciences institute at the university of Stanford were firebombed. “Dr. Srinivas watched the charred fragments of his lifetime’s work crumble in a fireman’s hands and fall to the ground” (Aarons, 1970). And a more recently case shows the same phenomenon: at the university of Delft in 2008, a fire started in the faculty of architecture and the built environment. The damage was enormous: not only the building, but also many collections, research data, bookcases and scale models were lost.

The generation of multiple backup copies is essential in when working with research data. However, if all copies are stored in the same place, the data is still not stored well protected. No researcher wants to lose decades of hard work, and that’s one of the reasons why adequate research data management deserves considerable attention.