QDR aims to digitally preserve deposited data for a minimum of 25 years subsequent to deposit, and hopes to provide continued access to all its holdings indefinitely.
Data deposited with QDR are part of the scientific record. Accordingly, any published data deposit should be considered permanent and cannot be removed or made unavailable ("deaccessioned") except under special circumstances.
QDR will consider deaccessioning data in three situations:
- Following its takedown policy and in accordance with US law, if material under copyright was deposited by someone other than the copyright holder, QDR will deaccession data if requested by the copyright holder unless a previous agreement (such as the deposit agreement) establishes QDR's rights to disseminate the data.
- When publishing the data violates ethical or legal norms, e.g., by compromising the confidentiality of research participants to whom promises of confidentiality were made. Requests for deaccessioning on this basis can come from the depositor or other affected parties.
- When data have been viewed or downloaded infrequently or not at all in the 25 years subsequent to their publication.
All final determinations on deaccessioning are made by QDR in consultation with depositors and other affected parties. When part of a data project is deaccessioned for legal or ethical reasons (situation 1 and 2 above), QDR aims to keep the remaining data files in that project available.
In line with best practices for data repositories, QDR maintains a landing page for each deaccessioned data project that describes its original content and the reason for and date of deaccessioning.