It appears that the question if and to which extend the archival law applies for all research data cannot be answered unambiguously. [1] Yet, public bodies are required to care for their archives in accordance with the provisions as stated in the public records Act 1995. The Archiefbesluit 1995 and the Archiefregeling 2009 are a further development of the Public records Act. Starting from this duty of care, Theo Hoksbergen (WUR) selected the relevant provisions with regard to control over research data. Also the comments are from his hand.
Public records Act art. 1 lid C.1
Archive documents are documents, regardless of their form, received or created by the public authorities and intended to be kept under their care.
Comments: research data is never mentioned by name. However, I consider them as archive documents. This article determines that research data should be filed at Universities (and is therefore not owned by an employee). Applies to both physical and digital.
Public records Act art. 3
The public bodies are required to bring and keep the archive documents in good, ordered and accessible state, as well as to ensure the destruction of the appropriate archive documents.
Comments: research data should be brought and kept in good condition, must be ordered in accordance of a particular system and in such a way that access to the data can be obtained without much difficulty.
Public records Act art. 5 lid 1
The University is required to design selection lists in which at least are shown those archive documents eligible for destruction.
Comments: for research data must be a retention period concluded in a legally established Selection list, showing whether they should be stored permanently or must be destroyed after a certain period of time.
Archiefbesluit art. 8
The University makes a statement of the destruction, replacement or alienation, which at least gives a specification of the destroyed, replaced or estranged archive documents and indicates under which and what manner the destruction, replacement or alienation took place. A copy of this statement shall be retained by the public body permanently.
Comments: research data that is destroyed after the retention period (as mentioned in the Selection list), is specified in a statement. This means that it is not allowed to the employed person, without consultation of the employer, to take the data away on departure.
Archiefregeling art. 17. Context en authenticiteit
The University ensures that of each of the archive documents can be established at any time:
a. the content, structure and appearance when receiving or creating by the University, as far as these aspects relevant for the work process;
Comments: you can also interpret this as follow:
Products produced from all work processes fall under the care of the University (research data).
Metadata
Metadata, or information about the information, are an important aspect of recordsmanagement. Two aspects are important:
1. information should be discoverable.
2. information must be interpreted and re-usable. Aspects such as reliability and authenticity are essential.
Comments: also in the archive world, it is important that information can be used again.
[1] This is the English summary of an article in by Menno Polak, UNIVERSITEITSARCHIEVEN, ONDERZOEKSARCHIEVEN EN ONDERZOEKSDATA, Gewina 30 (2007) 138-152:
This contribution concerns the relationship of university archives and research data. In the last few years the call for the preservation of these data for purposes of re-use has grown stronger. This is not usually because of their function as (formally) archival material but from a viewpoint of the preservation of scholarly information. The question is raised whether the reflection of research by university researchers should be considered a part of the university archives, and as such subject to Archival Law. It appears that this question cannot be answered unambiguously. This is partly due to the fairly far-reaching consequences a positive or a negative answer might have both for the archival repositories and for the preservation of the research data. To specify the area of concern the various types of research and researchers’ archives that have survived from the past are looked into. The experience of the University of Amsterdam archival project of the last few years show that hardly any research data from the past are preserved in the university archives. It is to be expected that the empirical research data, which are nowadays digital, will in the future as in the past be most at risk, whereas the administrative documents originating in the margin of the university research will be preserved in university records. The solution for the future is sought here in the storage of the digital data in (digital) institutional of subject repositories, e.g. DARE and DANS. The data are considered as scholarly information rather than as archival documents. In no way does this detract from the need to preserve the data, either from a perspective of research or as archival records.