Recommendations for Best Practices for Data Preservation and Open Science in HEP

TL;DR

This paper provides comprehensive, actionable recommendations for data preservation and open science practices in high-energy physics, emphasizing long-term data usability through effective information management during active data use.

Contribution

It offers the first set of detailed, domain-specific best practices for data preservation in high-energy physics, developed through expert consensus and stakeholder collaboration.

Findings

Recommendations are actionable and tailored to particle physics.

Emphasizes importance of collecting rich metadata during active data use.

Provides a web-based tool for accessing and implementing best practices.

Abstract

These recommendations are the result of reflections by scientists and experts who are, or have been, involved in the preservation of high-energy physics data. The work has been done under the umbrella of the Data Lifecycle panel of the International Committee of Future Accelerators (ICFA), drawing on the expertise of a wide range of stakeholders. A key indicator of success in the data preservation efforts is the long-term usability of the data. Experience shows that achieving this requires providing a rich set of information in various forms, which can only be effectively collected and preserved during the period of active data use. The recommendations are intended to be actionable by the indicated actors and specific to the particle physics domain. They cover a wide range of actions, many of which are interdependent. These dependencies are indicated within the recommendations and can be used as a road map to guide implementation efforts. These recommendations are best accessed and viewed through the web application, see https://icfa-data-best-practices.app.cern.ch/