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IDEAL Data Policy

1. All investigators participating in IDEAL agree to promptly submit their final Quality Controlled data to the IDEAL Data Archive Center (IDAC) at the latest by 15 May 2018 (six months after the end of the IDEAL Field Project Deployment) to facilitate inter-comparison of results, quality control checks and inter-calibrations, as well as an integrated interpretation of the combined dataset.
2. During the Data Analysis Period, defined as up to a 12 month period following the end of the IDEAL Field Project Deployment, IDEAL PIs may have exclusive access to this data. This 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 publish their results. Data will be password protected upon the request of the data provider.
3. All data will be considered Public Domain no later than 12 months following the end of the IDEAL Field Project Deployment (i.e., on 16 November 2018 and thereafter). A dataset within the IDEAL archive can be opened to the public domain earlier at the discretion of the data provider for this particular dataset.            
4. All data shall be promptly provided to other IDEAL investigators upon request. All IDEAL investigators will have equal access to all data. A list of IDEAL investigators will be maintained by NCAR/EOL and will include the Principal Investigators (PIs) directly participating in the field experiment as well as collaborating scientists who have provided guidance in the planning and analysis of IDEAL data.
5. During the data analysis period, the investigator(s) who collected the data must be notified first of the intent to use the data, in particular if data is to be provided to a third party (e.g., journal articles, presentations, research proposals, other investigators). It is strongly encouraged that PIs responsible for acquisition of data be invited to become collaborators and co-authors on any projects, publications and presentations. If the contribution of the data product is significant to the publication, the PIs responsible for generating a measurement or a data product should be offered the right of co-authorship. Any use of the data should include an acknowledgment (i.e., citation). In all circumstances, the PIs responsible for acquisition of data should be acknowledged appropriately. Following availability in the public domain, users of the data are strongly encouraged to contact the relevant PIs prior to incorporating it into peer-reviewed publications.
6. 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 IDAC, EOL will create and distribute respective DOIs that should be used in IDEAL related publications. DOIs will not be created for preliminary data.

The IDEAL home page contains relevant links to project and data documentation, distributed data access, and other collaborating projects' data sets.

An initial master list of all IDEAL datasets (with links) has been compiled to provide easy access to all operational and research IDEAL datasets. This list will form the NCAR/EOL IDEAL Long-term Data Archive where datasets are grouped by category (i.e., radar, satellite, etc.) and platform. Please review this list to verify that your dataset(s) are properly named, with the appropriate authors identified. Email any corrections, additions, or deletions directly to eol-archive@ucar.edu. If you already have your datasets available on-line elsewhere, please email the link(s) or FTP access information.

To submit your dataset(s) and documentation to the IDEAL Long-term Data Archive, see the anonymous FTP instructions below. For users without Internet access, or if your dataset(s) are too large to FTP (e.g., 250GB or larger), please contact eol-archive@ucar.edu. In these cases, users can submit their data on a USB drive to the shipping address below. If you have a large number of files to FTP, please tar or zip your files by day or what makes sense for your dataset.

It is critical that submitted datasets are accompanied by sufficient documentation. The minimum required metadata is shown below after the FTP instructions. More detailed documentation guidelines can be found here.

Data Submission FTP Instructions for the IDEAL Long-term Data Archive at NCAR/EOL:

    FTP:   ftp.eol.ucar.edu

    Login:    anonymous     (No password required.)

    cd /pub/data/incoming/ideal  (NOTE: This command should be done all in one step.)



It is very important to send an email to eol-archive@ucar.edu once your file(s) have been FTPed. In your email and in your dataset readme file, please include the following minimum required information for your dataset(s):

1. Dataset Title - The dataset title that will publicly appear in the data archive. EOL may modify for project consistency.
2. Dataset Author(s) - List dataset authors. Indicate lead and corresponding authors. Include contact information.
3. Time of Interest - Include begin and end dates (i.e., YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss to YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss).
4. Area of Interest - Include GeoLocation information (latitude/longitude box) (e.g., 40.00 to 45.50;  -95.37 to -110.00).
5. Data Frequency - Frequency of data collection (5 minute, hourly, continuous, etc.).
6. Data Spatial Type -  ISO metadata SpatialRepresentation (vector, grid, textTable, tin, stereoModel, video, etc.) which describes how the geographic nature of the data is represented.
7. General Dataset Description - Short description of this dataset. 
8. File Names - List names of files transferred.
9. Data restrictions - Indicate if dataset needs to be restricted.  Password protection is available for a dataset upon request.  A dataset will NOT be password protected unless requested at the time of submission or as specified in this project's Data Policy.  If password protection is requested, you will receive a project-specific "user ID" and "password."  If you require additional security, please contact  eol-archive@ucar.edu to request a unique "user ID" and "password" for your data.
10. GCMD Keywords - Please select keywords at least down to the  "variable_level_1"  level to support search and discovery of your dataset.  Select keywords from the list at http://gcmdservices.gsfc.nasa.gov/static/kms/sciencekeywords/sciencekeywords.csv?ed_wiki_keywords_page
11. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) - Indicate if you would like for NCAR/EOL to generate a DOI for your dataset. If your dataset already has a DOI, please include that link in your email.
12. Publications (Optional) - Please include a list of links to publications using this dataset, including "in press" and "submitted" publications, conference proceedings, theses, and reports.  Submitted publications will be added to this project's publications list.

Thank you for providing data to the Long-term Data Archive at NCAR/EOL. Feel free to contact us with any questions or issues.



The EOL Data Management Team

NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL)

Email:  eol-archive@ucar.edu

Mailing address:

NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory

Attention:  IDEAL Field Project Data Management

P.O. Box 3000

Boulder, Colorado, USA 80307

Shipping Address:

NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory

Attention: IDEAL Field Project Data Management

3090 Center Green Drive

Boulder, Colorado, USA 80301