3.5 Accepting or rejecting data

The pre-ingest phase is finished when the decision to accept or reject the data is made.

If deposited data does not meet the archive's data collection and quality criteria, it can be rejected. Data archives might, for example, reject:

• data that the data archive does not have the capacity for (e.g. big data or personal data),
• data that falls outside the disciplinary/thematic scope of the acquisition policy,
• data that is not properly documented, files that cannot be opened or exported to an acceptable format.

If data are rejected:

• Information about the decision to reject data should be sent to the depositor.
  • Reasons why data has been rejected should be explained.
  • If possible, suggestions for other appropriate repositories, for example, institutional repositories, other domain repositories or more general repositories, could be given.
• Rejected material (data, documentation) should be removed from the temporary storage.

If the deposit meets data collection and quality criteria, data are accepted.

• Data depositors should receive a notification of data acceptance. The message might include information on the next steps (Ingest phase).
• A data deposit agreement should by this moment already be signed between the archive and involved parties to ensure that there is a legal ground for the data archive to start the curation and preservation process.
• A data deposit agreement is a document describing the deposit and the responsibilities of the data depositor and the data archive, including  preservation and access conditions. The archive might have one or several standard versions of the agreement, with a possibility to modify it, if necessary. The researcher responsible for the project should sign it or, if this is not possible, the document should be signed by the head of the research institute or similar.
• The data deposit agreement may be signed on paper or digitally, for example, in a web-based data submission form. It may be done already in an earlier phase of Pre-ingest, but it should be done before data are ingested.
• A data deposit agreement might not always be needed, such as if there are other appropriate grounds for data archiving (for example, data is archived in an institutional repository).  
• Depending on how work in the data archive is organised and what the data flow looks like, the next steps may involve moving the data and metadata package from temporary Pre-ingest storage to another Ingest/Curation storage.
• If there are different data curators involved in pre-ingest and ingest phases, there might be checklists to go through and forms completed by the curators working in ingest.
• If the data archive uses workflows or project planning software, the status of the incoming study might need to be changed, so any activities completed during pre-ingest should be added and described.
• Ingest team should be alerted after data are accepted for Ingest.