Who owns the raw data

Raw reads and raw spectra are files. Who may keep them, for how long the institution needs them kept, and whether anyone may analyse them again are sentences in the statement of work. They are not a mood that appears after the invoice, and they are not a copyright ruling this page can hand you. The scientific commissioning of the study is described in commissioning a sequencing or proteomics study. The habit of writing lines a quotation can answer is how to write a laboratory sourcing enquiry. A scope can be discussed through laboratory procurement or academic research, and sent by quotation request or contact. Discussing custody of files is not a claim that a sourcing desk runs a sequencer.

The question the statement of work has to answer

You will want the primary files on the day a reviewer asks for a reanalysis, a student inherits the project, or a processed table turns out to have used the wrong reference. On that day, "the company probably still has it" is not a location. The statement of work should answer three operational questions in plain language. Who may keep a copy of the FASTQ, the raw spectra, or the equivalent primary file? For the period the institution needs, where do those copies sit? Is a later reanalysis included, quoted separately, or out of scope?

Legal ownership, copyright, and institutional policy can wrap those questions. Your technology-transfer or research-contracts office uses the words they require. Your job as the scientist is to make sure the scientific objects are named so the legal sentence has something accurate to attach to. Do not let a template that says "data" stand in for the file type.

Primary files are not the report

A FASTQ file holds sequencing reads and their quality scores. A raw mass spectrum file holds the acquisition the instrument wrote. Alignments, count tables, peptide identifications, and PDF reports are derived. Derived files are useful and smaller. They are also frozen interpretations. If the reference genome was wrong, or the search database was an old UniProt release when you needed a current one, the derived table repeats the mistake. The primary file is what lets a new analysis start.

The confusion is accepting "results" as a deliverable. Ask which objects the word covers. If it covers a PDF and a spreadsheet, say whether the FASTQ or the raw spectra are also delivered. If they are not, you are choosing to depend on the provider's archive and on their willingness to reopen a job. That can be a conscious choice. It should not be an accident of vocabulary.

Public method libraries such as protocols.io show how often a conclusion depends on processing choices made after the raw file exists. Those choices are a reason to keep the raw file where you can reach it, under whatever custody the statement of work states.

Who may keep a copy

Write the parties, not a slogan. A typical research arrangement names the commissioning institution as a party that receives a copy, and names the provider as a party that may keep a copy for operations, for a period. Sometimes the institution wants to be the only long-term holder. Sometimes a collaborator must receive a copy too. List the parties who may store the primary files. List the parties who may not, if that constraint matters to you, and let the contracts office turn the list into their clause.

"The data belongs to the client" is the slogan version. It feels clear and often leaves the practical questions blank: which files, delivered how, kept by whom in the meantime. Prefer the operational list. Then hand it to the office that owns the contract form. This article does not supply that form, and it does not decide whose intellectual property the sequences are.

Retention the institution needs

Ask your data or research office how long primary research files must remain recoverable. Then write that need into the statement of work as a period or as "until the institution confirms deletion", whichever they tell you to use. A provider's default archive of a few months and a funder's expectation of several years can both be real and still conflict. The statement of work is where the conflict gets resolved, before the files exist.

Say what happens at the end of the period: the provider deletes their copy, or they ask you before deletion, or they transfer a final copy and then delete. Pick one. "Kept securely" without a period is not a retention rule. It is a comfort.

Also say the transfer format and the moment of transfer. A copy that arrives as FASTQ on a disk you can read, within a stated number of days after acquisition, is an operational promise the quotation can make. A copy that exists only on a portal you lose the password to is a weaker promise. Name the portal rules if a portal is the method: who may download, and for how long the login works.

Whether reanalysis is in scope

Reanalysis means running alignment, quantification, a database search, or a statistical contrast again, perhaps with a new reference or a new covariate. It consumes people's time and compute. It is not free just because the raw file exists. The statement of work should mark reanalysis as included once, included for a defined period, available as a separate quotation, or out of scope.

If it is out of scope, your copy of the primary file is what makes an in-house or third-party reanalysis possible. If you do not receive that copy, an out-of-scope mark means you cannot reanalyse at all unless the provider agrees later. Write the combination you actually want. A common honest combination is: primary files delivered to the institution, provider may keep a copy for the stated period, reanalysis is a separate line and is not included in the acquisition fee.

A plain-language clause you can hand to the contracts office

The following is scientific hygiene, not a contract and not a copyright position. Adapt it only with the office that signs.

The provider will deliver FASTQ files, or the raw spectral files, for every sample that passed intake, together with the sample sheet. The commissioning institution may keep those files for the period its research-data practice requires. The provider may keep a copy for a stated period and will not use the files for a purpose the statement of work does not name. Reanalysis is not included. A later reanalysis may be requested as its own scope. Deletion, if required at the end of the provider's period, will be confirmed in writing.

Your office may reject half of those sentences. That is the point of showing them early. A rejected sentence is better than a missing file.

When the two archives disagree

Months later the provider's portal still has a FASTQ set and your copy is missing two samples. The statement of work is how you know which copy is supposed to be complete. Compare file names to the sample sheet. A missing sample is a delivery gap, not a reason to reanalyse the rest and forget the gap. If retention has expired and neither party has the file, the study cannot be reopened from primary data. That outcome is acceptable only if you chose it. It is a poor surprise.

If a reanalysis is in scope and the new result conflicts with the report, keep both and record the reference or the contrast that changed. Do not overwrite the first report. The first report was a deliverable under the inputs it named.

What this page refuses to settle

It does not say who owns a sequence under any country's copyright or database rules. It does not say a funder is satisfied. It does not say a provider must delete files. It says the scientist should surface the operational questions so the people who can settle them see the file types. ISO 9001 is a distant public cousin: agreed requirements are written. Your contracts office is the actual author of the clause.

Safety and human-derived material

If the samples are human-derived, retention and who may hold files are also ethics and governance questions. Your ethics approval and your institution's data rules outrank a convenient archive. Say so in the note you send the provider, and do not use a commercial template to widen access beyond what the approval allows. Research files are not a diagnostic record unless a regulated process says they are. Do not mix those regimes in a sentence about FASTQ.

What to put in the enquiry

Ask the quotation or the statement of work to name the primary file type, the parties who may keep copies, the retention the institution needs, the transfer method, and whether reanalysis is included. Attach the scientific scope from the commissioning guide so custody is not negotiated in the abstract. Send the file through laboratory procurement or academic research, using contact or a quotation request. A scope can be discussed. Then walk the draft to the office that signs, and keep their wording together with the sample sheet.