ORCAS Data Policy

Updated 10 January 2016

Also see the ORCAS Data Fair-Use Policy

1. Instrument teams will provide quicklook data products to the project PIs for merging with other data sets within 24 hours of a flight to support in field quality control and flight planning.
2. Model output related to the ORCAS data sets will be similarly made available to the science teams as soon as is practical.
3. All investigators participating in ORCAS agree to promptly submit their preliminary quality controlled measurement data and appropriate model products to the ORCAS Data Archive Center (ODAC) at the latest by 28 August 2016 (six months after the end of the field campaign) to facilitate inter-comparison of results, quality control checks and inter-calibrations, and integrated interpretation of the combined data set.
4. All investigators participating in ORCAS agree to submit their final quality controlled measurement data and appropriate model products to the ORCAS Data Archive Center (ODAC) at the latest by 31 December 2016 (10 months after the end of the field campaign) to facilitate final merging and quality control checks in advance of the initial public release on 1 March 2017.
5. Preliminary and final data submissions should include documentation in the form of a readme file describing the measurement and data processing procedures used to generate the data. Instrument investigators are encouraged to also submit raw data and all data processing routines used to get from the raw to final data products.
6. While quicklook and preliminary data sets will be distributed within the team and may be shared outside the team to support early analyses, in no case shall quicklook or preliminary data be used in a publication, rather only data from a subsequent official release of the ORCAS data shall be used.
7. During the data analysis period, defined as a one-year period following the end of the Field Deployment, ORCAS Investigators will have exclusive access to these data and model products. This initial analysis period is designed to provide an opportunity to quality control the combined data set as well as to provide the investigators ample time to prepare manuscripts for publication and presentation.
8. All data shall be promptly provided to other ORCAS investigators upon request if not available through the archive. All ORCAS investigators will have equal access to all data. A list of ORCAS investigators will be maintained by NCAR/EOL and will include the Investigators directly participating in the field experiment as well as collaborating scientists who are members of the ORCAS Science Team. No restricted data will be provided to non-ORCAS Investigators without the permission of the PI who collected that data.
9. During the initial analysis period, the Investigator(s) who collected the data or generated model output must be notified of the intent to use the data or model products in the early phase of the research project. It is agreed that PIs responsible for acquisition of data or generation of model output be invited to become collaborators and co-authors on any projects, publications and presentations that results from use of the data or model product they have provided.
10. All measurement data will be considered public domain no later than one year after the end of the ORCAS campaign (i.e., on 1 March 2017 and thereafter). A data set within the ORCAS archive can be opened to the public domain earlier at the discretion of the data provider for this particular data set.
11. International agencies, professional societies, and research organizations are moving towards requiring researchers to formally cite data and sources that led to a given research result. Consequently, there has been an increased use of DOIs or Digital Object Identifiers (used to cite publications for many years), as a simple standard way to also reference or cite datasets.  DOIs allow for linkages between datasets and respective publications, thus providing the ability to track the use of these datasets in the literature (metrics).  DOIs are considered “perpetual” and citation format standards have been established for data DOIs. Once final datasets are submitted to the ODAC, EOL will create and distribute respective DOIs that should be used in ORCAS related publications.
12. The EOL will be responsible for the long-term data stewardship of the ORCAS archive.
13. More specific citation instructions will be provided with the release of the public data set, but in general, all acknowledgments of ORCAS data and resources should identify: (1) the ORCAS campaign; (2) the crew and support staff at the NCAR Research Aviation Facility; (3) the providers who collected the particular datasets or conducted the model simulations being used in the study; (4) the relevant funding agencies associated with the collection of the data or model simulations being studied, (5) the role of EOL or relevant data archive center, and (6) use of any relevant DOIs.