SSC Monitoring & Responsibilities

Data management is a shared responsibility of the researchers, heads of department and the board of SSC. These responsibilities are further clarified below.

Researchers

• The researchers themselves bear primary responsibility for research data management. The School of Social Sciences data management policy states that all researchers are equally responsible for proper data management.
• Researchers are responsible for:
• Compliance with legal and ethical requirements regarding their research data, including drafting data management plans and the assessment by ethics committees if necessary;
  • Their research data and the fact that it is reliable and traceable during the data life cycle and that it has been stored properly;
  • Archiving their research data for at least ten years after publication, unless otherwise prescribed by law;
  • Sharing their research data for scientific purposes and for verification unless legal provisions prohibit that;
  • Reporting research data to the Data Protection Officer (FG) of VU Amsterdam (servicedesk.privacy@vu.nl) if they collect and process personal data in their research;
  • Communicate the school-specific rules and guidelines with regard to this theme informally during research projects and the supervision of students, employees or new hires, which includes creating an open atmosphere with plenty of room to discuss mistakes and dilemmas.
• Final responsibility for the above-mentioned responsibilities may be assigned to another researcher and/or project leader. However, this does not relieve the researcher of personal responsibility.

Heads of department

• The head of department ensures department compliance with the rules and guidelines as set out in this memorandum.
• The head of department is responsible for:
  • Promoting a culture in which researchers take personal responsibility. He or she leads by example, inspiring others to adopt the department’s scientific attitude and comply with research ethics standards and openly discuss best practices for data management.
  • Developing additional research data management policies that are in keeping with the field’s research characteristics.
  • Data management should be an important theme in the annual interview and performance assessment reviews of researchers who collect and/or process large amounts of data and the reports should clearly reflect the importance of this theme.
  • Reaching agreements with researchers about their research data in the event that they leave the university.
  • Supplying information to the board, external review committees and/or third parties about the evaluation of the management of research data, including data storage practices and verification practices.
•  The department head’s responsibilities may be delegated to other members of staff such as the research manager, but the department head always bears final responsibility.

Board

• The Board is responsible for:
  • Monitoring the implementation of and compliance with the policy during administrative consultations (BO’s) with the departments and the university executive board;
  • Evaluating the policy and making adjustments where necessary;
  • Keeping the subject of data management alive in the school and keeping it on the policy agenda;
  • Stepping in when serious incidents occur;
  • Seeing to it that the basic facilities (data repositories, G drive capacity, access to Surfdrive etc.) and services (provided by UBVU and the IT Service Desk) are fully operational and secure, reliable and accessible to school researchers; allowing them to fully comply with the responsibilities as describe above.
• In the event that the facilities do not or not adequately meet the specific needs of school researchers, then the departments, with assistance of the research support office, are responsible for providing them with any facilities, resources and support they deem necessary. If the required support cannot be offered and/or if an FSW-wide provision has to be made available, then the school board will decide how and under which conditions to facilitate this request.