The Value of Legacy data - securing access and reuse of 25 years of data

Researchers need access to infrastructures to make their research data findable, accessible, interoperable
and reusable, known as FAIR. The FAIR principles of data sharing transcend disciplines and encapsulate
the aims and ideals of Open Data advocates.
As researchers look to make their research data FAIR, in some disciplines this may result in data being
shared in disparate solutions. If we look at the Geosciences for example, a researcher may use GitLab to
share their code, a hosted website for discoverability and separate storage for the preservation of
legacy data. Research groups often possess a rich heritage of data spanning
periods of several decades. However, this legacy almost never gets proper attention due to lack
of funding, and thus lack of long-term maintenance plans. As a consequence, the legacy data are
typically unreadable and inaccessible due to obsolete formats and technologies in which they are
provided.
This presentation will demonstrate how 25 years of wind data at the Technical University of Denmark
(DTU) has been shared in accordance with the FAIR principles in their Figshare powered repository.
We’ll demonstrate how the long term availability of the data is secured and how discoverability is ensured
and data reuse is encouraged with robust metadata. This presentation will also touch on the importance of
data reuse throughout the research lifecycle and showcase this for both an academic and lay audience
through the features of the DTU Data repository.