ACTIVE Data Protocol

The aims of the Data Protocol are

• to encourage rapid dissemination of scientific results from the ACTIVE project;
• to protect the rights of the individual scientists funded by ACTIVE;
• to have all the involved researchers treated equitably;
• to ensure the quality of the data in the ACTIVE data archive.

It is recognised that these aims may conflict at times, and it is hoped that the provisions of the protocol resolve these conflicts fairly. Therefore, all investigators involved in ACTIVE abide by the following conditions.

Data availability

1. The designated ACTIVE data centre is the BADC.
2. Data and relevant model results produced during the project will be communicated to all ACTIVE participants as soon as available.
3. Any corrections or amendments to the preliminary data should be announced as soon as possible.
4. It is imperative that the ACTIVE Principal Investigator be consulted when suspicious data is encountered or when interpretation of data becomes dependent upon understanding the underlying technique.
5. 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.
6. It is left to the investigators to judge whether results from given model runs are of prominent interest and worth to be archived at the BADC.
7. Archival must take place no later than six months after collection or production.
8. 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 originators of the data will be consulted and only changes provided by them will be archived. Both errors and updates will be reported and documented in the metadata attached to the data files.
9. It is the investigators' responsibility to ensure that the data used in publications are the best available at that time.

   Conditions of access

10. Access to the ACTIVE data archive will be restricted to all ACTIVE participants during the data collection and for a period of time of two years thereafter, after which the data will be released to the public domain.
11. Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain, no data should be transferred to a third party without the originator's consent.

    Data use and publication

12. Should ACTIVE data be used to support a research study, it is essential that the ACTIVE Principal Investigator will be made aware that the data are being used.
13. Whilst the data are restricted from the public domain, all investigators have the right to refuse that their work, whether measurement or calculation, be used in a publication or presentation prior to the investigators' own publication of that work.
14. If measurements or model results from scientists participating to ACTIVE are used in a publication by an ACTIVE participant, 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.
15. Any publication or communication based on or using ACTIVE data – whether issued during or after the 2-year retention period – will duly acknowledge the individual ACTIVE investigators responsible for the measurements.

    Data format and metadata (*)

16. Data submitted to the BADC must be in NetCDF or NASA Ames format and data file names must follow the BADC File Name Convention.
17. Complete metadata describing data, models and model results, regardless of their archival location, must be supplied to the BADC.