NIH Funded Researchers must use LabArchives at UVA.
Effective July 1, 2025, all NIH federally funded research data related to published work at UVA must either be stored on the LabArchives platform or include a reference to its location if stored elsewhere. While not required if you are not NIH funded, all UVA investigators with federal funding are strongly encouraged to use LabArchives to store or point to a location where your research data is stored.
Requirements to use LabArchives fall under UVA Policy RES-002: Ownership, Retention, Safeguarding, Management, and Transfer of Research Records. Specifically, "Electronic research records must be maintained on University-owned and/or University-managed devices, systems, or services which include deposit with external data repositories consistent with sponsor requirements (e.g., NIH Data Management and Sharing Plans).
Safeguarding must be in accordance with IRM-003: Data Protection of University Information, the applicable data protection standard (i.e., for highly sensitive, sensitive, internal use, or public data), and any associated procedures. Unpublished research records are categorized as “sensitive data” or “highly sensitive data.”
Please note that while LabArchives is HIPAA compliant, UVA has decided that Protected Health Information (PHI) or other highly sensitive data may not be entered or stored in LabArchives at this time. In the future, UVA may consider making allowing HIPAA-protected information/data into the system, but storing PHI and/or other highly sensitive data it is not available at this time.
LabArchives supports compliance with sponsor data management and sharing policies, including the NIH DMSP. By utilizing LabArchives features to organize data, document data types and formats, create metadata for re-use, and store data in a secure location researchers will be better prepared to meet funder requirements. LabArchives supports documentation and management of a Data Management (and Sharing) Plan and allows the upload of plans created using the DMPTool.
For more information about how LabArchives supports key aspects of this requirement, please visit their page about Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy.
Minimum Requirements
To comply with new federal requirements , investigators with NIH-funded research must include a page in their LabArchives notebook that either stores the research data or provides the location where the data is stored and maintained (whether electronically or physically).
If your research requires hard copies, you must specify in LabArchives where this information is maintained and stored at the University of Virginia.
We strongly encourage researchers to use the "UVA | Electronic Lab Notebook Cover Page" (available in the UVA | LabArchives Resources site-wide notebook) as a template for the required information. Before accessing the site-wide notebook, users will need to sign-in to their approved account using their Netbadge credentials.
Please note that this is the minimum requirement for NIH-funded researchers at this time. While it is likely that other federal sponsors are moving in this direction, LabArchives will not be required for data related to other federally-funded awards at this time.
Exceptions
Clinical trials are exempt from the LabArchives requirement. While you are welcome to use LabArchives, it is not mandatory at this time.
Clinical Trials are defined as "a research study in which one or more human subjects are prospectively assigned to one or more interventions (which may include placebo or other control) to evaluate the effects of those interventions on health-related biomedical or behavioral outcomes" (per the NIH definition of a clinical trial).
Classified Research, as well as some other situations may be exempt. If you would like an exception, please contact us.
UVA Library and the Health Sciences Library
Both libraries have data management specialists who can provide support with creating and implementing Data Management and Data Management and Sharing Plans.
You can find information about the University Library and the data management support they offer here: https://guides.lib.virginia.edu/RDM/planning
You can find information about the Health Sciences Library and the data management support they offer here: https://guides.hsl.virginia.edu/nih-dmsp
Data Repository Resources
The iTHRIV Research Data Commons is a solution that provides health researchers and data stewards with a single interface to manage, share and use research data (including PHI and other restricted, highly sensitive data) throughout its lifecycle, from initial design and approval through data collection and analysis, and ultimately publication. Integration with other institutional research systems, such as the IRB-HSR database, ensures that data can only be accessed by the appropriate users.
To learn more, please email iTHRIVadmin@uvahealth.org to request a consult for use of the iTHRIV Commons for storage and private sharing of identified patient data with appropriate research team members.