The guidelines were laid down in an appendix to the contract used for all grants. The Council for Applied Social Research established similar guidelines in 1989. Under the terms of research grants, research data and appropriate documentation were to be transferred to NSD unless there were legal barriers. Data and documentation were not to be destroyed without the consent of the relevant council. NSD has an additional responsibility for pre-serving for future use, personal data registers for all the divisions of the Research Council as well as data generated within the universities and university colleges.
Research data belong to the public domain.
Therefore, the National Archive of Norway has the legal authority to inspect the data archives, and to issue regulations directing which data are to be stored. In particular, the National Archive is to ensure that the storage and the maintenance of data are conducted properly. The establishment of the archive for research data at NSD is approved by the National Archive. The National Archive has declared that valuable research material should be safely stored and made available for future research. A significant part of basic research data contains information that identify individuals, so-called personal registers.