Classify records by retention purpose
Retention classes should reflect legal, operational, and incident-investigation needs rather than one generic duration.
Purpose-based classes reduce unnecessary storage while preserving critical audit evidence.
Learning Center
Research Documentation Retention Standards for Procurement and QC Records
Define what to keep, for how long, and in what format so research procurement and QC records remain reviewable.
Preserve context with each retained record
Store policy version, reviewer identity, and source-reference metadata alongside documents.
Context preservation prevents orphaned records that cannot be interpreted later.
Audit retention controls periodically
Run periodic checks to validate retention rules are being applied consistently and deletions are properly scoped.
Retention drift can expose both compliance and operational risk if left unmonitored.
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