Data Governance

When you’re ready to start sharing your data, you can set up a detailed Data Access Protocol (DAP) that outlines the data governance for yourself, your research team, and potential re-users. This DAP will ideally be public and findable in your chosen repository.

There are many topics within a DAP, it will require you (and/or the project team to come together) to decide on what is relevant and best for your data. This can include, for example, the terms & conditions for data reuse and the governance procedure in terms of responsibilities and tasks of the team members.

See the PROactive Cohort Study’s DAP here: https://dataverse.nl/file.xhtml?fileId=141206&version=3.0

Data Governance can be as simple and elaborate as you like, it all depends on you and your project team.

Reflect on:

• What would you like to get out of sharing the data? For example, citations/acknowledgments, co-authorship, collaboration? This should be specified in the DAP so the end-user knows their obligations.

• What kind of time and effort can you and/or your team invest in the data governance? For example, assessing incoming requests, preparing a datafile for sharing, maintaining a data sharing logbook. Note: If there is privacy-sensitive data involved, even the simplest DAPs have to take some legal considerations into account!