As evident, several open questions remain regarding the archiving of data. Legal uncertainties, particularly in relation to copyrightThe German Copyright Act (UrhG) protects certain intellectual creations (works) and services. Works include literary works, photographic, film and musical works, as well as scientific or technical representations such as drawings, plans, maps, sketches, tables and plastic representations (§ 2 UrhG). The artistic, scientific achievements of persons or the investment made, on the other hand, are considered to be services worthy of protection (ancillary copyright).The author is entitled to publish and utilize the work. Read More, pose significant challenges and are not always straightforward to resolve (Wünsche et al., 2022, p. 27):

• Who owns the data when they are primarily generated through collaboration and communicative exchange?
• Who should be recognized as the author?
• Who decides how the research data will be managed going forward?

Another critical and unresolved issue is the multilingual nature of archives. Social and cultural anthropologists, in particular, often document their fieldwork in multiple languages, making archiving and reuse of such data significantly more complex:

• Which language should be used for archiving? Should it be the researcher’s native language? The language of the studied region (and thus accessible to the research participants), which would necessitate the availability of local repositoriesA repository is a storage location for academic documents. In online repositories, publications are digitally stored, managed, and assigned persistent identifiers. Cataloging facilitates the search and use of publications and author information. In most cases, documents in online repositories are openly and freely accessible (Open Access). Read More? Or should English, as the international language of science, be used? In any case, this would require substantial translation efforts, incurring considerable financial and time costs.

Considering these questions and the processes described earlier, we conclude that the decision about whether and which material should be archived must remain with each researcher, in consultation with their research participants, and should not be tied to funding conditions. Moreover, preliminary considerations and, if necessary, preparatory steps should already be integrated into the methodological approach and carried out in close collaboration with research participants.

Key aspects to be considered are:

1. Preparing and selecting data for archiving and potential reuse.
2. Determining which audience the data will address.

Ideally, the decision to archive data in appropriate repositories should be made prior to the empirical research, allowing for this aspect to be incorporated into data collection, and coordinated with the research participants, and resources for archiving can also be planned and applied for. However, in practice, this is rarely feasible, particularly in ethnographic research, as it is often not entirely clear in advance which areas will be investigated and to what extent the data – mindful of all data protection regulations and ethical considerations – will be suitable for archiving and reuse. Special care must be taken with sensitive dataWithin the category of personal data, there is a subset known as special categories of personal data. Their definition originates from Article 9(1) of the EU GDPR (2016), which states that these include information about the data subject’s: Read More to evaluate the extent to which data archives account for ethical considerations and ensure controlled access to datasets.