Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A consortium publishes its dataset on Zenodo with a CC BY 4.0 licence, assigns a DOI, and writes a comprehensive README for the legacy.
- Is an instance
A research network transfers its long-running community workshop to a learned society as part of legacy planning.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A short-lived project blog with no preservation plan does not show legacy planning.
- Not an instance
Outputs left only on a private server unreferenced are not preserved as legacy.
Editorial commentary
Output legacy planning is forward-looking, not backward-looking: it is the deliberate work of deciding what should happen to a project’s outputs, deliverables, and communities of practice after dedicated funding stops, and putting the arrangements in place before the money runs out rather than leaving it to whoever happens to still be around.
What it covers
Two things, in practice. First, preservation and licensing of tangible outputs — depositing datasets, software, or other research products in a suitable repository, assigning a persistent identifier such as a DOI, applying an open licence such as CC BY 4.0, and documenting them well enough that someone outside the original team can actually use them. Second, succession for anything the project built that is not a static output — a recurring workshop series, a shared tool, a community of practice — deciding who, if anyone, will carry that forward once the project itself has ended, for example by transferring stewardship to a learned society or an existing infrastructure provider.
Why funders increasingly expect it
Data management plans and final-stage reporting requirements increasingly ask applicants to address sustainability directly, reflecting the broader push toward FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) research outputs — a plan that stops at “we will deposit the data” without saying where, under what licence, or with what documentation, no longer satisfies many funders’ expectations.
vs. project closure documentation
Output legacy planning is not the same as project closure documentation. Closure documentation is a backward-looking record of what was delivered, spent, and disposed of at project end. Legacy planning is forward-looking: it decides what should happen to outputs and communities after that record is closed, and is closely related to but distinct from post-project sustainability planning more broadly.
What weak legacy planning looks like
A project blog or wiki maintained only during the funded period, with no plan for who hosts it afterward, or datasets left on a departing researcher’s personal server with no public reference to them, are the most common failure modes — both technically “outputs,” but neither actually preserved as a usable legacy.
Also known as
Legacy planning · Output stewardship · Output preservation planning
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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