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Durability

Definition

Maintenance of data’s integrity and availability for the future. Done in a sustainable way, it minimises environmental impact.

Definition source: Sustainability Directory (2025). Data Durability.

Stakes

part of: opacity, discrimination

related to: FAIR

Enabling accessibility and availability of your research output after the end of your project, is very valuable, because it allows other researchers to build off of your work.

Where does it occur in the lifecycle?

1 - Set up

Questions to consider throughout your work

  • How will you ensure your data remains FAIR in the future, after the project ends?

Examples

Good-better-best practices

Good Better Best
Formally publish your documentation and data to an (external) repository. Ensure that someone (e.g. a data management department) inherits your raw data from you and regularly checks it. Choose the repository you want your dataset to feature in based on the durability and continued management of the repository.
Maintain dataset versioning and ensure that the documentation plots the different changes made in the different versions of data and metadata.

Resources