Research project documentation should be maintained as specified in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2007 (Part A, Section 2.1) as indicated below:

• For short-term research projects, that are for assessment purposes only (e.g. research projects completed by students), retention of research data for 12 months after completion of the project may be sufficient.
• For clinical trials, data should be retained for a minimum of 15 years for adult studies or 25 years for paediatric studies.
• For areas such as gene therapy, research data must be retained permanently (e.g. patient records).
• Student led or observational studies are to be retained for 7 years plus 2 year after publication.
• If the work has community or heritage value, research data should be kept permanently, preferably within a national collection.