Data Archiving Policy

Reviewed by: Physics IT Policy Committee, currently under review.

The School of Physics staff and students generate a large amount of data, all of which cannot be archived indefinitely. The School does archive and keep data for the life of the storage media (in UNIX tar format) according to the following criteria:

1. The School will archive the user’s Physics account, email inbox and data found on the School’s central data storage when a user’s account expires or is closed.
2. Data on all other computers is the responsibility of the user to archive when they leave the School or end their collaborative work.
3. If the user does not archive and remove their data the School will advise the user by email (sent to their Physics email address) as well as the head of the research group, giving the user two weeks notice that their account is about to be closed and data deleted.
4. It is the user’s responsibility to advise Physics IT Support if the account and data should remain and provide a valid reason why, which will be verified with the head of the research group.
5. In some circumstance data from other computers may be archived for the user along with that mentioned in item 1 above. However, it is up to the owner of the data to request this.

It is beyond the scope of the School’s network at present for staff to search computers a user may have used to identify data to be archived.

The School takes no responsibility for loss of user data once an account has expired or association with the School ended.