Research data management - FAQ

Regardless of where the data is stored and regardless of the storage service, any data created or modified during your collaboration with UNIL is protected by copyright but belongs to UNIL. This means that for any use other than scientific and academic purposes, a special agreement of UNIL's Management is required (e.g. for commercialization).

Based on UNIL’s rugulations (Art. 70-72 LUL), we would like to clarify a few practical points related to data::

If in doubt, please contact contact UNIL's Legal Department.  

UNIL encourages employees to save all work-related data generated during their collaboration with UNIL on the University's institutional infrastructure (Directive 4.5 Art. 8 al. 2). To this end, the UNIL Central IT Services (Ci) provides a NAS storage server.

The UNIL Isilon NAS server is a secure and robust storage service that guarantees the security and durability of your work data. This network storage server is available to all collaborator under contract with UNIL and offers a high level of availability. It is divided into two separate tree structures – research and administrative – which allow data to be organized according to its nature.

Since June 2019, the UNIL IT Center has strengthened its services dedicated to research at the University by creating the Scientific Computing and Research Support Unit (DCSR). This unit is responsible for advising researchers and providing them with new infrastructure for storing and processing research data.

The DCSR NAS server (nasdcsr.unil.ch\RECHERCHE) is dedicated to storing research data organized by project for each Principal Investigator (PI). HPC infrastructure enables researchers to perform scientific computing.

To benefit from these resources, PIs must complete the DCSR application form and submit a Data Management Plan (DMP) when requesting storage space for a research project.

These services are subject to a fee and their use is billed to PIs according to the annual price list (authenticated UNIL access) established by the UNIL IT Center.

The use of cloud services must comply with UNIL's legal requirements. Furthermore, any use of these services is the sole responsibility of the user, who assumes full responsibility for the risks involved, knowing that no assistance is offered on our part.

The University authorizes the use of third-party storage services provided that the data is stored in Switzerland (Directive 6.9, Art. 5). If the data is stored abroad, it must be encrypted and the encryption key must be stored in Switzerland.

For cloud storage, UNIL has opted for Microsoft's OneDrive solution. However, this storage service can only host professional administrative data. The use of OneDrive to store research data is prohibited.

We also draw your attention to the fact that the use of cloud services may involve risks for your data:

• The provider may modify its service at any time (service termination, price changes, etc.).
• In the event of data loss, no assistance will be provided by the FBM IT Service.
• The data may be read and used by third parties (foreign legislation is often more flexible in terms of data protection).

In order to guarantee free access to research data for the scientific community and the public, the SNSF is gradually implementing new measures for project submissions. Since October 2017, each project must be accompanied by a Data Management Plan (DMP), but since April 2023 it is no longer mandatory to submit it at the same time as the funding application.

Created in 2024, the Data Stewardship Biomed Unit (DSBU) offers UNIL and CHUV researchers comprehensive and personalized support to help them manage, share, and store their data. This unit, located both on the Dorigny and Epalinges campus, provides advice on DMP drafting, data description, storage, and sharing solutions.  

On the CHUV side, the Bibliothèque Universitaire de Médecine (BiUM) provides a wealth of advice on improving the visibility and impact of publications and offers a range of training workshops.

At UNIL, Open Science has its own dedicated website. UNIRIS has also developed a tool to help with writing Data Management Plans, the results of which can be evaluated and validated by their teams.

Finally, the Graduate Campus teams also organize workshops on writing DMPs and publishing in Open Access. Consult the list of courses and activities on offer and register online.

Several projects are underway at universities to address these issues. Although it is very tempting to use a program downloaded from the Internet that meets the needs of a group of people, management quickly exceeds the resources (financial and human) and knowledge (legal, IT, etc.) of a single research group or even a department.

We are seeing that more and more users interested in replacing paper lab notebooks want to make the management of different data media more efficient or are looking for inventory management solutions for the equipment used in laboratories.

To meet these needs, the FBM IT Department has tested several software programs and is in close contact with EPFL's School of Life Sciences, which has already implemented a system. For the time being, pilot projects and various tests have shown that a very thoughtful approach is necessary. Indeed, it has been found that:

• The hidden costs (setup time, monitoring, infrastructure, etc.) associated with implementing software are very high (around CHF 20,000/year per laboratory depending on the software chosen, even if the program is free).
• programs are often unsuitable or do not meet user needs;
• more and more grants and research funds are updating their guidelines on data storage and processing, requiring researchers and their tools to adapt.

Currently, several research groups have expressed growing interest in this type of tool. For this reason, at its meeting on May 16, 2018, the Dean's Office decided to give researchers free choice of their electronic laboratory notebook system, provided that the data remains within the University.

The Scientific Computing and Research Support Unit (DCSR) of the UNIL IT Central Services (Ci) provides a a  transfer tool  for sending data to internal or external UNIL collaborators.

The SWITCHFileSender web application also allows you to send files of up to 300GB to a list of recipients of your choice and to invite users to use the service.

After publication, data produced in the course of research must be stored securely for at least 10 years (Directive de la Direction 4.2, Art. 2.4). Responsibility for the appropriate storage of data lies with the research project leader.

UNIRIS (UNIL's Information Resources and Archives Department) has published various articles on this subject on its website dedicated to research data management. There you will find best practices related to the management, preservation, and archiving of research data.

For more information, please contact UNIRIS.

Due to the highly sensitive nature of the information used for medical research, security and data protection requirements differ between UNIL and CHUV. In general, the latter is more restrictive (access, encryption, etc.).

The DCSR NAS server is intended to store data from research carried out at UNIL. CHUV employees who are linked to UNIL through their scientific activities may nevertheless request access to this infrastructure. All requests for access to a group directory on the NASDCSR storage space are managed by the PI. In addition, non-UNIL personnel must request a UNIL IT account in order to obtain such access.

For the transfer of large files between the two institutions, CHUV has set up its own secure system: Filecare. You will find additional information about this tool in the IT section of the CHUV intranet. If you have any questions regarding the data security requirements of CHUV, please contact their IT support at service.desk@chuv.ch.