Dear list,

we are a statistical/epidemiological departement that - after a few  
years of rapid growth - finally is getting around to formulate a  
general data storage and retention policy - mainly to ensure that we  
can reproduce results from published papers/theses easier in the  
future, but also with the hope that we get more synergy between  
related projects.

We have formulated what we feel is a reasonable draft, requiring  
basically that the raw data, all programs to create derived data  
sets, and the analysis programs are stored and documented in a  
uniform manner, regardless of the analysis software used. The minimum  
data retention we are aiming for is 10 years, and the format for the  
raw data is quite sane (either flat ASCII or real

Given the rapid devlopment cycle of R, this suggests that at the very  
least all non-base packages used in the analysis are stored together  
with each project. I have basically two questions:

1) Are old R versions (binaries/sources) going to be available on  
CRAN indefinitely?

2) Is .RData a reasonable file format for long term storage?

I would also be very grateful for any other suggestions, comments or  
links for setting up and implementing such a storage policy (R- 
specific or otherwise).

Thank you for your time,

alexander


Alexander.Ploner@meb.ki.se
Medical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm
Tel: ++46-8-524-82329
Fax: ++46-8-31 49 75



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