IDA is a service for safe research data storage, offered free of charge to Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences and state research institutes. The service is organized by the Ministry of Education and Culture and funded by the Academy of Finland. The service is intended for raw data as well as processed data and is based on Fairdata principles.
IDA enables saving, organizing and sharing data between user groups and storing the data in an immutable state. IDA is intended for immutable research data. Use of the service requires that the stored data are described as research dataset. The described data can be set openly available or its availability can be restricted. The data owner decides on the openness and usage policies for their data.
The service is not suitable for data under constant usage (e.g. data used in web applications) or dynamic data (e.g. daily backup). The service is not suitable for sensitive personal data or data that contains biometric identifiers.
Data marked by the user to be persistently stored, i.e. “frozen” in IDA, can be described with the description tool Qvain. A dataset published with Qvain gets a persistent identifier and a landing page in the search service Etsin. This makes the dataset findable by others. The files of the dataset can be set openly available or available under license terms. It is also possible to publish only the metadata of the dataset.
The IDA storage space is applied and granted to a project, and the users associated with the same project share a common IDA storage space. The same project can have members from multiple organizations and also collaborators from abroad. To use the IDA service, you will need a CSC user account and then either create a new project or be added as a member to an existing project.
The projects are created in CSC’s (Service Producer) customer portal MyCSC. When you create a new project, you become the project manager. The project manager applies for IDA storage space for the project, and decides who are members of the project and thus have access to its IDA storage space. Read about the Prerequisites and Responsibilities for a Project Manager. See also IDA’s Terms of Use for a Project Manager.
The project’s Project Manager can apply for IDA storage space in MyCSC.
1. Log in to MyCSC with your Haka ID and create a CSC user account (in case you do not already have one).
2. Create a new academic CSC project.
3. Apply for IDA storage space with an application form in MyCSC. You’ll receive an email notification when your application has been approved.
4. Log in to IDA at https://ida.fairdata.fi.
1. If you do not already have a CSC user account, please register a user account with Haka on my.csc.fi. Read CSC Docs for detailed registration instructions.
2. Create a CSC project in MyCSC. Select Academic as the project type.
3. Apply for IDA storage for your project. Go to the My Projects view from the left side menu, and select the project you want to apply for IDA storage space.
4. From the project’s Services menu, select IDA and then select Apply for access.
5. Fill out the IDA application form. Under Storage Quota Owner, select your home organization.
Fill in the applied storage quota in gigabytes in the Applied Storage Quota field, by entering a number only in GiB. Read and accept the Terms of Use of the service. The IDA contact person of the organization that you have selected will process your application. They will be provided with your contact details (name and email address) along with your application so that they can ask for more details, if needed.
6. You will receive an email confirmation after your organization’s IDA contact person has approved your application. After the application has been approved, you can log in to the service at ida.fairdata.fi with your Haka ID or your CSC ID.
See the quick start guide and the full user guide for help. To describe and publish your stored data as a research dataset, see the Qvain user quide.
NB! Renew your CSC account password annually when requested to keep your projects and their service access active. If you wish change the project manager, open a locked user account, or stop using the IDA service, please contact servicedesk (a) csc.fi.
As the project manager, you can add users to your project and thus give access to the project’s shared IDA storage space, as long as the new user has first registered a CSC user account.
1. Log in to my.csc.fi.
2. In MyCSC, go to My Projects view from left side menu and select the project you want to add the user to.
3. Under Members, fill in the username of the new member and click the plus button. The invited user will get an email notification informing them of their project membership.
The project manager can also remove project members in the project view by selecting the cross icon on the right side of the project member. This also removes access to the project’s IDA storage space.
The project manager can also apply for a project membership for a collaborator abroad.
Once the user has created a CSC user account, and the project manager has added them as a project member, the new member still needs to accept the IDA service Terms of Use in the project details view, under the Services menu. Read CSC Docs instructions on how to accept the service terms of use.
The project member will receive an email confirmation after accepting the Terms of Use. NB! The project member needs to renew their CSC account password annually when requested to keep their CSC account and its service access active.
If you wish to continue using IDA as the storage location for your published research dataset, but you don’t want to act as the project manager anymore and you don’t wish to upload new data, please contact your home organization’s IDA contact person to discuss your options. See the IDA contact person list here. To continue storing the data in IDA, the CSC project associated with the data needs to be kept active even when the data is published, but the project manager of the CSC project can be changed. In order to store and utilize the data independently of the original creators of the dataset, it’s essential that the data stored in IDA is well-documented, it’s findable in Etsin, the project members have agreed upon the rights regarding the data, and the data is licensed enabling further use. Note that the IDA Terms of Use require the users to publish one or more dataset descriptions of their data stored in the IDA service.
If the IDA storage space is no longer needed, the project manager must notify CSC at servicedesk (a) csc.fi and agree upon the deletion of the stored data with CSC. The users are responsible for moving the data for their own use to another storage location.
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 organization that has granted the IDA storage space.
If you have questions, please contact us at servicedesk@csc.fi, 09 457 2821.
If you are a registered CSC user and need another account for managing services that you run in the CSC services, we can create a machine-to-machine robot account for you. Please note that each service requires its own unique robot account. Send the following information to servicedesk@csc.fi.
If you have been granted an account for a fixed period, the account expires when the period ends. Accounts created with Haka do not have an end date, and they remain valid as long as the account's password is changed once a year.
All accounts are immediately terminated if their owner is not reachable, i.e. emails bounce back.
If you want to terminate your account, you can simply neglect changing your password. The account will be terminated one month after the password has expired. If you want to terminate your account with immediate effect please contact servicedesk@csc.fi.