Exit planning and dealing with data when leaving the university
Answer
Exit planning for research data involves preparing for the responsible transfer, preservation, or disposal of data when a research project concludes. This process ensures that the data remains accessible, reusable, and compliant with ethical, legal, and institutional requirements.
Your data management plan (DMP) should outline how data will be handled at the end of the project.
Staff
When staff leave University employment or move departments within the University, certain arrangements must be made. These include access to premises, retrieval of equipment or other items, and the appropriate handover or disposal of data and other materials.
This must be managed through the staff exit checklist, which is a mandatory process.
Postgraduate Research Students
Once you have completed your course of study you will no longer have access to University systems to store and manage your research data, including OneDrive for Business. If you need to retain data that will not, or cannot, be publicly shared, we recommend discussing with your supervisor if it might be possible to arrange for long term preservation of your data using the Research Data Storage (RDS) service.
If you plan to share your data publicly via the University's institutional data repository, Figshare, we recommend that you upload and publish the data in good time before you lose institutional access, following final submission of your thesis, or transfer the data to your supervisor in order for them to deposit the data on your behalf.