Profs are not forever — it only seems this way.
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I have written a posting about the dangers on in-house data storage considering academic attrition rates and another on why data storage is a job for journals.
Thinking more about it There’s another argument not to use in department data storage:
Professors are not forever — it only seems this way.
Do we really want to trust-burden the next profs with the life work of their predecessors? Universities might see it as “free data for publications” but I guess many profs see it as “not my ideas”, “not my paradigm”, “not my research area” — “I want that storage space”. And they might even be right considering academic incest.
Data must — via publications — become independent of the researchers themselves.
And like written, that’s usually a job for journals.