Transferring and disposing of your research data at the end of your degree
What postgraduate research students need to do with their research data when leaving the University
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When you leave the University, your University account will be closed at midnight on your leaving date. Once your account is closed, you will be unable to access your account or any of the content (e.g. emails and files) contained within it.
It is the responsibility of all postgraduate research students to ensure that they review and move, delete or transfer ownership of any data they have collected during their time at the University.
Please follow the below steps before leaving the University to ensure your data has been handled correctly:
- Review any data that you have stored in Google Drive or U: drive and remove any data that is personal to you or data that is not required by anyone else at the University in the future. (Please note, data that is stored in your U: drive will be deleted by the University 90 days after your finish date.)
- If you have any research data stored in your U: drive, please ensure this is transferred to a shared research folder in X: drive.
- If you have any research data, or data that is required to be kept by the University after you have left, stored in your Google My Drive, please ensure you have transferred the ownership of the data to your principal investigator or an agreed member of staff at the University. Ownership of individual files can be changed by the current owner, but if you transfer ownership of a folder to someone else, only that folder will be transferred. The contents of the folder will NOT be transferred.
- If you need to transfer whole folders and their contents, please complete this .
- If you only need to transfer individual files, read the guidance on If you need support in transferring the ownership of the data, please complete this .
- If you have data stored in a shared research folder in X: drive, you do not need to take any further action with this data.
- If you have research data stored in a Google Shared Drive, ensure you have added your principal investigator or an agreed member of staff at the University as a ‘Manager’ of the Shared Drive.