Data & materials
Depending on the services provided by the research archive, detailed guidelines on what types of data they are able to archive and how it should be prepared for long-time preservation and re-use should always be made easily accessible.
Documentation
UKDA: Depositing shareable survey data (pdf)
DANS: Preferred formats (pdf)
Preparing data for inclusion into the archive
As a general rule a researcher should deposit data and document it in such a way that any reuse of the data is self-explanatory.
Documentation
NSD: Archiving form (pdf)
Legal aspects
In archiving research data, one might distinguish between two types of licenses. In the context of data ingest, the depositor agreement regulates the rights and responsibilities of the archive and the depositor. Within the context of dissemination, the end user license regulates the rights and responsibilities of the archive and the consumer, e.g. researcher re-using data for secondary analyses.