Researcher roles and responsibilities
Monash researchers have the primary responsibility to govern their research data as part of their research practice. Within a research project, the Primary Chief Investigator will have ultimate responsibility over research data.
Researcher responsibilities are informed by legislation, regulation, industry practice (i.e. Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018 and supporting statements and guides) and the University's regulation and policy framework that governs research data. Most importantly, researchers must adhere to all University and specific Faculty-level policy, procedure or requirement that deals with research data.
These responsibilities have been summarised below (and also available as a downloadable PDF). This includes an outline of:
- your responsibilities as a researcher; and
- the resources you can access for assistance (training, tools and advice).
You are also able to explore the various responsibilities across the research data value chain by choosing the relevant tab below:
Researchers are responsible for:
- adhering to the University’s data related policies;
- engaging with relevant data related training and education from institution;
- report to the institution specific issues, risks or breaches in accordance with applicable institutional policies and, where relevant, other reporting schemes such as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme;
- understand, set up agreements (if required) and follow procedures/ policies related to data when researcher moves between institutions;
- employ good management practices in handling all research data with appropriate security to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of data as required;
- where human data is involved, employ good management practices in handling research data with appropriate privacy measures such as managing identification (and re-identification) risk and data minimisation as per relevant legislation;
- determine, record and observe property-type rights (including IP, licensing, copyright or other property right claims) over the data. This includes where data has been shared by other researchers and/ or other agencies (e.g. government) and would be covered by an appropriate data sharing agreement and arrangements as well as agreements with collaborative partner organisations and/ or funders;
- determine, record and observe Indigenous sovereignty rights (including Australian and other First Nations') over the data including specific IP or other ownership type rights, making it available to appropriate groups (during and after the project), Indigenous involvement in design of collection, analysis and reporting;
- determine, record and observe all data subject rights (e.g. consented participants and other data subjects) over the data, particularly data access, withdrawal/ destruction and re-use rights;
- if any of these responsibilities are delegated to another (e.g. a data manager, third party etc), it is the responsibility of the researcher to ensure compliance with these responsibilities;
- development of a data management plan for clearly stating data management responsibilities is strongly encouraged; and
- research data requested through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests is provided in an understandable format and state.
For support on all these responsibilities, please see the relevant section below:
Copyright (IP)
For guidance on IP/ copyright of your research data please go to Intellectual property support. For other contractual issues please go to Office of the General Counsel Home - Legal
DMP+
For guidance on creating a plan for your research data (DMP+) please go to Plan for your research data
FOI
For guidance on FOI requests please contact the Office of General Counsel.
Indigenous data sovereignty
For guidance on Indigenous sovereignty rights please go to Indigenous data and CARE principles
Issues/ breach (security or privacy)
For information on privacy or security issues or breaches please go to Report an incident - Cyber Security at Monash University
Privacy
For guidance on privacy & data subject rights please go to Ethics and privacy responsibilities
Security
For guidance on classification and security of your data please visit Research data solutions tool or go to Home - Cyber Security at Monash University
Training
For information on available training please go to Research data training
Researchers are responsible for:
- ensuring that all data collected and used meets the aims of the research undertaking and has appropriate consents (if required); and
- employing good data management practices such as proper naming and defining of data that adheres to standards for scientific terminology and information encoding (if relevant).
For guidance on this please go to Defining data and its format
Researchers are responsible for:
- employing good management practices such as stable storage formats ,regular backup and workflow documentation;
- keeping and making accessible durable records of the research data which includes all records, files or other evidence, irrespective of their content or form (e.g. in print, digital physic al or other forms), that comprise a research project's observations, findings or outcomes, including primary materials, raw and analysed data;
- keeping and making accessible durable records of the administration of the research (e.g. questionnaires, data dictionaries, ethics, protocol, agreements, contracts); and
- primary responsibility for determining which data is retained in what manner it is kept and for what length of time, taking into account legal, funders, publishers and ethics requirements as well as other value that the data may hold. This may include a maximum period if there are privacy obligations.
For guidance on which data systems that provide stable storage, backup and can assist in workflow management please go to Digital Research Capability Catalogue (DRCC).
For guidance on retention at the closure of your research please go to Data retention.
Researchers are responsible for employing good data management practices:
- to ensure data quality/ integrity (including undertaking specific data verification activities); and
- such as version control and other relevant mechanisms.
For more information please visit Data quality
Researchers are responsible for:
- analysing data in a manner appropriate to the aims of the research and ensure conclusions are justified by the results; and
- employing good data management practice such as version control and other relevant mechanisms.
For guidance on this please go to Data analysis and processing.
Researchers are responsible for:
- providing output of research data in a manner that disseminates the findings to make a contribution to knowledge or practice or to serve a public good;
- disseminating results in an appropriate format, where human participants have been engaged; and
- acknowledging other’s work appropriately for all data used.
For guidance on this please go to FAIR principles, open data and data publishing
Researchers are responsible for:
- determining which data is shared and the manner in which it is shared (including agreements, infrastructure used, access and process controls) taking into account legal, funders, publishers and ethics requirements as well as other value that the data may hold.
For guidance on this please go to Data sharing outside your research project
In 2025, specific training for researcher roles and responsibilities will be launched. Until then, if you have any queries, please contact us at researchdatagovernance@monash.edu.