Policies, Procedures, and Decision‐Making: Data Managers and the Research Lifecycle

Research data is an asset. Researchers may be required to provide access to their data by scientific funders or academic journals and deposit their data in archives. Managers of archives are guided by principles, policies, and the law when curating and providing access to data. Practices around data storage and access, however, are not always cut and dry; research data managers sometimes need to interpret policies. This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with 15 data managers from 8 repositories in the U.S. These repositories were all affiliated with universities but served varied constituents and provided a range of services. Differences revealed opportunities and challenges in managing data repositories regarding, for instance, who can access data and the level of protection data requires. We also found that data‐related policy challenges may stem from any stage of the research lifecycle.