The Research Lifecycle Programme (RLP) and Research IT (RIT) have kicked off a piece of work to improve how the University manages and stores research data that is no longer in regular use, also known as ‘cold’ data. 

Many researchers already use RIT’s Research Data Storage (RDS) which is home to huge amounts of research data, including cold data. We plan to move cold data onto a more cost-effective storage platform.

We’ve given ourselves 2 years to complete this work. 

During the first year we plan to talk to our research community as well as colleagues in IT Services (ITS) and RIT to gather an extensive list of requirements. We’re also planning to meet with teams from other Universities who have developed similar platforms. We’ll talk with suppliers and carefully assess who can best help us provide the optimal solution. 

Year two will be spent implementing the solution and integrating it with existing University systems. 

We’re putting together an informal group of critical friends, to advise, help with decision making and shout if it looks as if we’re going in the wrong direction! 

This advisory group is made up of members of the research community, ITS and RIT – if you’d like to be included, please contact caroline.martin@manchester.ac.uk. 

Humanities is currently underrepresented in the group, so we would especially welcome anyone from this faculty.

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