APPRAISE Data Protocol
The aims of the Data Protocol are,
- to encourage rapid dissemination of scientific results from the APPRAISE programme;
- to protect the rights of the individual scientists funded by APPRAISE;
- to have all the involved researchers treated equitably;
- to ensure the quality of the data in the APPRAISE data archive.
These aims conflict at times, and it is hoped that the provisions of the protocol resolve these conflicts fairly. It is recognised that this cannot always be achieved to everyone's complete satisfaction; there are bound to be cases where individual interests clash with those of the APPRAISE programme. Therefore, to try to meet these aims, all PIs involved in APPRAISE, in accordance with and on behalf of their co-investigators, must agree to abide by the following conditions:
- Data and model results of interest to APPRAISE groups that will be produced during the programme will be made available to all APPRAISE participants, and APPRAISE participants only, during a restricted access period ending one year after the concerned project end date, after which data and model results will be released to the public domain. At a principal investigator’s request, access may be extended to personally authorised collaborators.
- The designated APPRAISE data centre is the BADC.
- When relevant, preliminary data must be made available to APPRAISE collaborators as soon as possible. Any corrections or amendments to the preliminary data should be announced as soon as possible.
- All validated processed data (i.e. data sets in their final form), as well as quality-checked raw data that will have been recognised of general interest to the community, will be archived at the BADC. Archival must take place no later than the end of the concerned project.
- If an error in the data is signalled to the BADC after archival, the updated version provided by the originator of the data will be archived alongside the old version or will replace the old version, depending on the nature of the error and in agreement with the data provider. If the error is detected by a user, the originator of the data will be consulted and only changes provided by him/her will be archived, following the same procedure as above. Both errors and updates will be reported and documented in the metadata attached to the respective data files.
- Data submitted to the BADC must be in the data format agreed between APPRAISE principal investigators and the BADC (namely NetCDF and NASA Ames).
- All agreed metadata describing data, models and model results, regardless of their archival location, must be supplied to BADC.
- It is each principal investigator’s responsibility to ensure that the data used in publications are the best available at that time.
- If measurements or model results from other APPRAISE research groups are used in a publication by an APPRAISE participant, during or after the programme, joint authorship must be offered. This does not necessarily have to be accepted; particularly in cases where due credit and acknowledgement can be given in other, more appropriate ways.
- Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain (see Clause 1), each principal investigator has the right to refuse to allow his/her work, whether measurement or calculation, to be used in a publication or presentation prior to the PI’s own publication of that work.
- Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain, no data should be transferred to a third party without the originator’s consent.
- In the event of dispute, the final decision rests with the APPRAISE Programme Advisory Group.
- At any time, APPRAISE data distributed via the BADC may not be used for commercial purposes. Requests for commercial use must be addressed to the owner of the IPRs, whether NERC or the data originator(s).
FAAM Conditions of Use
Data providers must be acknowledged in any publication using FAAM core data or any documentation supporting an application based on FAAM core data.