Selling a research lab? Value the records separately

Three checks before the records are offered

First the platform: on our board 8 of 15 notebook and repository vendors write that the customer keeps ownership, and the others' documents are silent on it.

Source: Lab notebook software data terms

Then the funder and the employer: federal award recipients hold title subject to the agency's licence, and in the UK an employer is first owner of what staff make at work. A closing lab should know which grants paid for which records.

Source: 2 CFR 200.315

Then the buyer: an organisation that licenses a company's own records, such as Nyne or Troveo, asks a different question from a publisher that licenses its own papers.

Source: Scientific data buyers

Three ways it can go

A trading lab can license its records and keep working. When a lab company is wound up, its directors can sell the records only before a liquidator is appointed; from then the liquidator sells, whether or not the company can pay its debts. Once a winding-up petition has been presented, a sale the directors make is void should the court go on to make a winding-up order, unless the court approves it. In administration the directors need the administrator's consent, and after dissolution anything the company still owned, its data rights included, belongs to the Crown. An adviser handling the sale can introduce them to us for a share of our fee. Say which fits your lab on the research data enquiry form.