Deposit Appraisal & Collection Policy

Collection development policy

The ADA collection policy aims to provide researchers with general guidance around the types of data that the ADA will accept for curation, preservation and subsequent dissemination. Research material submitted to the ADA should support the Archive's mission and scope and meet the needs of the user community.

https://docs.ada.edu.au/index.php/Mission_%26_Scope

Submission appraisal criteria

See the deposit quick guide for steps involved in lodging data with the ADA. This guide will help to ensure that data and metadata are sufficient for long-term preservation and for dissemination. 

https://docs.ada.edu.au/index.php/Quick_Deposit_Guide

Remit of the ADA: The ADA accepts materials that fit broadly into the remit of the archive.

Social science DDI metadata: Materials should be able to be described with social science DDI metadata.

Scientific or historic value: Materials must be of current value or potential historical interest to the ADA.

Subject matter: The subject matter of submitted materials should be in either the Social, Political or Economic areas, and affiliated research fields.

Complete data: Where possible, full project data is preferred, not just the data associated with a publication release or any other subset of the data available.

Secondary analysis: Materials must have the potential for secondary analysis using the data and supporting documentation. All materials must be made publicly available with transparent access criteria.

Out of scope materials

Digital materials: The ADA will only accept digital materials.

Explicit or offensive content: Materials that contain explicit or offensive material.

Limited secondary use potential: Materials that offer limited or no potential for secondary analysis will not be considered favorably.

Disclosure risk: Materials that pose significant risk of re-identification that cannot be sufficiently addressed.

In the event that the ADA determines that the material is not suitable for archiving, it will endeavour to provide the Data Owner with other potential archives that are more suited to the subject matter. The final decision about acceptance of a submission lies with the director or deputy director of the ADA.

Preferred data formats

The ADA accepts most formats, has a list of preferred formats. All data and documents will be saved in the AIP in a preservation format (see R09 Preservation plan) regardless of the format received in the SIP. For dissemination, the ADA will create SPSS, STATA, SAS and CSV versions for quantitative data. For qualitative data, possible data formats vary significantly. For this reason, ADA has developed specific preferred formats, partly based on those identified by the UK Data Archive .