Data offboarding

The department wishes to receive a complete overview of all projects in which you have had access to research data, seeing as it is important to close down any access to these.

For this reason, we ask you to please state the name of the projects and the data controller in question, as well as to make sure that your access is closed down.

Well in advance of the end of your employment, you must ensure that a new project manager is appointed for the research projects in question.

The new contact person responsible for the project must be employed at Aarhus University, and in the case of projects containing personal data, you must also report this change to the internal record at Aarhus University at fortegnelse@au.dk.

To ensure the best possible safekeeping of research data, you must make sure that a network drive dedicated to the project in question has been set up. Please consult the bullet point Data collected via survey systems and registers for further information.

Set up a network drive

If this has not already been done, please contact Aarhus BSS IT and Digitalisation and ensure that a network drive is set up and that the new project manager has access to it. It is important that the network drive is set up with ‘extended log safety’. The name of the new network drive must contain the project serial number from the internal record at AU.

• How to order a network drive

Transfer data

Once the network drive has been set up, you must ensure that all relevant data (including experimental protocols, plans and strategies for experiments/studies, notes, laboratory books, data and primary material), contracts, approvals etc. from the project is transferred to this network drive in accordance with the policy for responsible conduct of research at AU.

To the greatest extent possible, sensitive personal data must be stored separately from all directly identifying information by way of a pseudonymised data set and an associated ‘key file’.

Personal data collected via a secure external system may/must continue to be stored on this platform, but naturally, you must ensure that the new project manager is assigned the relevant user rights.

In accordance with the current policy for responsible conduct of research at AU, data and primary material etc. (of the electronic kind as well as on paper) must be stored for a period of at least five years after the latest expected publication of results derived from the data in question (the five-year rule).

Please note: This means that data may NOT be deleted before the five-year rule has been observed. Data may also not be completely anonymised before the five-year rule has been observed, unless the originality is preserved and can be verified during the five-year period.

Data in direct individually identifiable form

In the case of data in direct individually identifiable form, you must extend the registration of each relevant project in the internal record at AU as necessary. This can be done by sending an email to fortegnelse@au.dk.

Any written and/or physical material related to a project must be filed securely in the department archive. Contact the department secretary to make further arrangements.

If you are the project manager for a project at another department, you must inform this department of the end of your employment.

You cannot freely transfer research data to a new place of employment or pass it on to others. This requires prior approval. In the case of personal data, a transfer agreement with approval from the head of department as well as the TTO must be in place. For more information, please contact tto@au.dk.

Register data which you do not have the permission to pass on

In the case of register data which you do not have the permission to pass on (e.g. from Statistics Denmark), it is possible to draw up a specific agreement to transfer the entire research project to a new place of employment, provided that this is a research institution.

If you need to access data after the end of your employment or affiliation, you must contact the head of department to make further arrangements.