Fairdata IDA (ida.fairdata.fi) is a continuous service for safe research data storage, offered free of charge to Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences and state research institutes.
IDA enables saving, organizing and sharing data within the project group and storing the data in an immutable state, before the data is described as research dataset with Fairdata Qvain tool. The described data can be set openly available with Fairdata Qvain for anyone to download or its availability can be restricted. The data owner decides on the openness and usage policies for their data. The research dataset published with Qvain gets a persistent identifier and a landing page in Etsin. This makes the dataset findable for others, and enables re-use of the data and creating a scientific reference.
Before you start using the service, please note:
- To continuously store data in IDA, the CSC project associated with the data needs to be kept active even when the data is published, but the project manager of the CSC project can be changed if needed. In order to store and utilize the data independently of the original creators of the dataset, it’s essential that the data stored in IDA is well-documented, it’s findable in Etsin, the project members have agreed upon the rights regarding the data, and the data is licensed enabling further use. Note that the IDA Terms of Use require users to include the stored data to one or more published datasets!
- The service is not suitable for data under heavy usage (e.g. computing disk data, data used in web applications).
- IDA can’t be used to store data that includes special categories of personal data, as specified in Article 9 of the EU GDPR “Processing of special categories of personal data” (http://www.privacy-regulation.eu/en/9.htm).
- IDA can be used either with a user friendly browser UI or command line tools. Read more about the different UIs from the user guide.
- Data is frozen in IDA before it is described as a dataset and openly available via Etsin. Frozen data is stored in IDA in read-only mode, to minimize user errors.
- The integrity of the frozen data is further protected against loss or corruption by replicating each frozen file to a secondary storage medium and calculating an SHA256 checksum for each frozen file.
- Storing data in IDA allows published datasets containing multiple files and folder structures. Data can be made openly accessible in their original folder structure instead of compressing the files and folders into a single zip package. The user can then download the dataset files flexibly via Etsin,
- A single dataset can include hundreds or even thousands of files and have a total volume of up to e.g. several terabytes, enabling users to make large datasets openly accessible with a single persistent identifier.
- Data can also be made openly accessible as a cumulative (growing) dataset, which means that additional files can be incrementally added to the same dataset without changing its persistent identifier.
- A dataset described in Qvain, and containing files stored in IDA, is assigned a DOI or URN, enabling easy reference in publications, and providing a resolvable URL to a dataset landing page in Etsin, via which the data can be downloaded.
- Data stored in IDA can optionally be transferred to the Digital Preservation Service for Research data (use of the Digital Preservation Service requires an agreement).
- Metadata of datasets created with IDA and Qvain can be found from Etsin, and from the research.fi-portal
More information
- Information about becoming an IDA user and a guide for applying for IDA space
- IDA Quick Start Guide and the full IDA User Guide
- IDA FAQ
- IDA Service Description
- IDA Storage Service Terms of Use
- Information on IDA’s maintenance breaks
Below there are two introduction videos to the IDA service. Click “CC” to turn subtitles on/off. Read the text versions of the videos.