URGENT Data Protocol

The aims of the Data Protocol are

• to ease dissemination of scientific results within the URGENT community;
• to protect the rights of the individual scientists funded by URGENT;
• to have all the involved researchers treated equitably;
• to ensure the quality of the URGENT data archive.

Although these aims may conflict at times, 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 URGENT programme as a whole. Therefore, to try to meet these aims, all scientists involved in the URGENT programme are required to abide by the following conditions.

1. All scientists involved in URGENT are to have equal and complete access to measurements and model results produced during URGENT.
2. Data must be made available to other URGENT scientists as soon as possible, via the designated data centres. Any corrections or amendments to data already archived at a designated data centre should be submitted as soon as possible.
3. To allow data validation, access to data and model results will be restricted to URGENT participants for a period of time ending one year after the completion date of the corresponding project. After the validation period, the data will be released to the public domain.
4. It is each researcher's responsibility to ensure that the data used in his/her publications are the best available at that time.
5. If measurements or model results from other research groups within URGENT are used in a publication, 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 possibly more appropriate ways).
6. Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain, each researcher 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 researcher's own publication of that work.
7. Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain, they should not be transferred to a third party (i.e. a non URGENT participant) without the originator's consent.
8. Data and metadata should conform to the standards laid out in the documents URGENT Programme Metadata Requirements and GIS Harmonisation Standards and URGENT Data Management Plan. These documents are available from the URGENT Web site (http://urgent.nerc.ac.uk/). For Air Science projects, data and metadata formats should comply with the NASA Ames standard specifications as described in the BADC documentation on that subject (http://www.badc.rl.ac.uk/data/urgent/Format.html).
9. In the event of a dispute the final decision rests with the URGENT Steering Committee.