The Rules of Good Scientific Practice of the University of Bielefeld and the German Research Foundation (DFG) require the protection of research data for ten years. The long-term preservation of research data offered by the Competence Center Research Data enables researchers to preserve the results of their work for a longer period after the end of the project (at least the required retention period). In contrast to data publication, long-term preservation does not aim at a further use of the research data by third parties, but rather focuses on the technically secure storage of the acquired data and the establishment of a process for accessing it.

We advise you on the selection of suitable file formats for long-term preservation (data transformation into non-proprietary formats, copy protection, migration barriers), on questions of access to the secured data and on data protection.