Storing and sharing research data after the ‘Space Race’ | Jisc

"The emerging demands of modern, data-intensive, collaborative research has seen swathes of researchers adopting services for data storage and preservation beyond their institutional offer. At the storage stage, a lot of researchers in the UK have been benefiting from the extra data storage space offered by Dropbox as a part of its ‘Space Race’ promotion. By convincing colleagues and students to sign up it was possible for individuals to gain access to significantly enhanced storage space, all synchronised from local machines in the usual Dropbox way.  However, as with all promotions, the ‘space race’ is coming to an end. From 4 March, these additional allocations will be removed and accounts will revert to their initial state, often with substantially less storage. Data above the account allocation will still be stored and accessible to download, but it won’t be synchronised with local files.  For those expecting changes in regularly updated data to be reflected in the cloud – for example by sharing live datasets with collaborators via Dropbox – this could be an unwelcome surprise ... It is possible – and Dropbox is encouraging users – to sign up for additional space with a paid monthly subscription.  But there are other considerations at force. In the UK the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and other funding councils have policies that the research data they fund must be managed and stored in the European Economic Area (EEA), and that 'effective data curation is provided throughout the full data lifecycle'.  UK Data Protection regulations also mean that some personal and other human data will also be stored within the same area ... There are a range of cloud storage solutions available for researchers that comply with funding council and data protection regulations. These cover managing, sharing and collaborating on research data at different stages in the research data lifecycle ..."