Research Data Management

The purpose of this guide is to provide information and tools for managing and archiving your data in light of potential data and information loss under the new administration. For further support and consultations regarding the contents of this guide, please email mlib-data@lists.utah.edu. Additional RDM guidance is available on our LibGuide.

For official University of Utah guidance and updates on federal funding and the availability of government information and data, please see the VPR’s Update on Federal Funding, the OSP’s Executive Actions and Federal Agency Updates, and the University of Utah’s Federal Transition Guidance.

Credit to Data Rescue Project for archived data and tools locations. Special thanks to all who have contributed to data rescue efforts.

A current list of data deemed to be at risk: https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/US_Government

For updates, follow: @datarescue2025@bsky.social and Peter Suber's (of Harvard's Library) updates

• Pre-prints of research removed from official sources may be available on OSF or institutional repositories
• Government website archives:
  • https://eotarchive.org/ archive of government websites prior to the administration change
  • https://govdiff.com/ compares government websites before and after the administration change
• Government data archives:
  • IPUMS census and survey data​
  • Data.gov Archive from Harvard​
  • For CDC: EDGI, Public Environmental Data Project, ICPSR, ICPSR Data Lumos, UCSB LSIT Data Mirroring, Internet Archive​
  • For NIH: UCSB LSIT Data Mirroring​
  • For NOAA: The Climate Mirror Project, UCSB LSIT Data Mirroring, Internet Archive (heat-index files)​
  • For HRSA: Healthy Regions Policy Lab at UIUC​
  • For EPA: Healthy Regions Policy Lab at UIUC​
  • For DOE: Open Energy Data Initiative​
  • For NCBI genome data: IGSR (1000 genomes data mirrored to UK)

• Archiving tools
  • https://archivebox.io/
  • https://webrecorder.net/
  • https://github.com/simon987/awesome-datahoarding
• Repository options
  • If you would like to move your dataset to an alternative or additional repository, we recommend the following options.
  • The Hive: the University of Utah’s institutional data repository
  • OSF: free and open source repository
  • Zenodo: free and open repository
  • See this guide to generalist repositories along with file size limitations, ability to handle sensitive data, etc.
• File management
  • 3-2-1 backups – you should (aim) to have:
    • 3 copies of your data, in
    • 2 different locations, with at least
    • 1 in cloud-based storage
  • Version control
    • Utilize file naming to keep track of versions and updates to your data
    • Can be documented through version number (v1, v2, etc.) or date of update (recommended format YYYYMMDD)
  • Metadata – important pieces of information:
    • Creator(s)
    • Description
    • Links to relevant publications
    • Key dates: collection, publication, versioning dates, etc.
    • Key locations