IDA Service Description

Service name Fairdata IDA – Research Data Storage
Service summary IDA is a research data storage service.

The service is part of the Fairdata services (Fairdata Service Description in Finnish). The other Fairdata services are:

  • Fairdata Qvain
  • Fairdata Metax
  • Fairdata Etsin and
  • The Digital Preservation Service for Research Data

The service is offered free of charge to its users. The services are available to the research community in accordance with the applicable usage policy. Minedu offers access to research data storage service IDA to Finnish higher education institutions and state research institutes. Minedu may also grant separate access to the service. Finnish higher education institutions and research institutes may distribute IDA storage capacity to actors within the Finnish research system, within the limits of their usage shares.

The service is intended for storing research data and materials related to it. The data stored in the service is available to all project users. The users mark their data to be persistently stored (“Frozen”) in the service. All project members may make the “Frozen” data and related metadata publicly accessible by using the other aforementioned Fairdata services. The data in the service is stored in Finland.

IDA service stores the data stored by organisations projects continuously or until it’s transferred to digital preservation, provided that the Terms of Use are met. The owners of the data decide on the openness and usage policies for their own data.

User organisations are offered support and guidance on using the service.

The Fairdata services are organized by The Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland and produced by CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
Detailed description
  • The service organiser (Minedu) grants user organisations the IDA use right, as defined in the use policy.
  • The contact persons of the user organisations grant group-specific storage space for research projects within the limits of their organisaton’s use rights.
  • Users belong to one or more groups in the service. There may be users from different organisations in the same group.

 

  • The user can transfer files and directories to the IDA and organise, update or delete them. At this point, the files are not yet in actual storage.
  • The user can freeze the files that they has transferred to the service. The data transferred to IDA is in the storage service only after it has been frozen. The preservation of frozen files is secured for example by making two copies of them. Frozen files are read-only to enable citations and creating dataset descriptions, and to protect their integrity.
  • The user can remove files from storage.
  • Frozen files are available to be described as research datasets with Qvain – Research Dataset Metadata Tool and can be packaged to Digital Preservation Service for Research Data. The research datasets, which are published by the user, are available in the Etsin – Research Data Finder.
  • CSC does not delete data that has been uploaded by users in accordance with the terms of use from the service without consulting the project manager or the organisation that has granted the IDA storage space.
Restrictions The service is not intended for data containing sensitive personal data.

The service is not intended for data which are actively processed or often moved between the service and another environment.

If the user organisation or user deletes data from the service, the deleted data is not recoverable. The metadata of the datasets is however retained.
Target audience Users of the user organisations that store research data with associated metadata and create research datasets, or are responsible for managing the research data. Other users defined in the IDA Use Policy.
How to obtain the service In order to access and use the service the user must have a CSC user account and project. The CSC user account and the project can be requested through CSC Customer portal or by contacting CSC Service Desk. The project manager can apply for IDA storage space in CSC Customer Portal. Storage quota in IDA is available after the application has been approved by the organization’s IDA contact person. Detailed instructions can be found at https://www.fairdata.fi/en/ida/becoming-an-ida-user/.

The service is accessible from the Internet at https://ida.fairdata.fi/.
User support The service producer provides the IDA service so that it is in principle available without interruptions.

Maintenance and user support are provided during the service hours.
Maintenance and repair operations take place during the service hours every second Wednesday of the month. The users are notified about the maintenance break in advance. The service hours are business days from 8 a.m. through 4 p.m.

Contact point

  • User guidance and general questions about the Service and its use
  • Contact point if the Service is not available or malfunction

CSC Service Desk
Clients responsibilities The user accepts the IDA–Research Data Storage Service Terms of Use in CSC Customer portal. The users also accepts the General Terms of Use for CSC’s Services for Research associated to CSC-accounts.
Service producers responsibilities The service producer is responsible for providing the service to users at the agreed service level. The producer is responsible for providing support in the agreed manner.

The service producer shall notify the user organisations and users of all security breaches and security risks without delays.

The Privacy statement of the Digital preservation services, Fairdata services and the Digital preservation solution (in Finnish).
Service producer CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
Service offered and organized by The Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland
Document version
  1. 1.0 16.8.2019
  2. 1.1 21.4.2022 (update to maintenance break time)