Archive all data?

I saw today this post on the LSE Impact of the Social Sciences blog and broadly speaking I am all for initiatives of the archiving for re-use of data. However I wonder if we are getting carried away somewhat with this. There is indeed a case for archiving the data from public funded, large studies whether it is in the Social Science, Science, Medicine, Engineering or the Arts. That is not in dispute. However it is below that level that things get murky. So let me draw maybe four levels of research data.

The Big Study

This is the above, it is funded either by a government agency, charity or other large body. It probably involves researchers from several institutions and may well included international collaboration. The team of researchers will not be less than twenty and may run into hundreds. It is big, well funded and expected to make an impact. Yes this should be archived

The Team Study

This covers a lot of research, it is smaller in scale. It is externally funded, but as well as research councils, government agencies and charities, there may also be other sources of funds such as industry, campaign groups, even local councils. The research team can vary from about 2 to 50 but usually all are based within a single institution. As a rule these should also be archived unless there is very clear reason not to. The archive may have restricted access for case where research is sensitive.

Personal Research

This is small scale, it may be a team of two or three, it may be externally funded,  it may not, or may be funded by consultancy fees etc. Often an individual is working on their own but may work with two or three others. It is solely based within a single institution and probably within a single department within that institution. This is where archiving becomes more difficult. The first aim should be to develop tools which encourages researchers to keep a note of what data they have and also to have sensible backup procedures. The next step is to find a way that data can be archived efficiently. Could perhaps open publishing be used as a way to gain proper access to this data. For instance a model where the papers are published but a charge is made for the release of the associated data.

Student Researcher

The lowest level, but at the other end are the millions of projects done each year by students. They should be being taught good practice, but they are learners. Learners make mistakes, the data sets are often small and sometimes quite idiosyncratic e.g. a convenience sampling of purchases of organic food from a local specialist shop. The best are up there with the personal researchers and most Doctoral Students should be aiming to be at this level. I think in this case the rule is the opposite of the team study one. That is the presumption is that data should not be archived unless there are significant outcomes from it. The best way of doing that seems to be whether there is a paper published from it.

So while wishing for more data to be archived, I think we seriously need to be circumspect about where we draw the line of which data should be archived.  The purist "all data" will just increase the amount of noise that archeologists need to hunt through eventually.