Interagency Data Stewardship/Principles

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Reference Materials

• CODATA's review of existing data policies
• IPY Data Policy
• GEO Implementation Guidelines for the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles
• Mark Parson's paper on Geographic Data Sharing
• Excerpts from NASA's Retention Schedules (NPR1441_1D) that are relevant to data policies and principles at NASA.
• NASA's Earth Science Data and Information Policy.
• NASA's "alternate" data rights language to ensure open sharing of data, documentation and software.
• NASA's A-Train Data Policy
• NOAA Administrative Order 212-15: Management of Environmental and Geospatial Data and Information
• Link to ESA's Second Data Policy Workshop presentations

Draft Outline of Statement

• Statement of data stewardship principles and recommended practices
  • Why?
    • ESIP wants to be a leader in promoting collection, stewardship, and use of Earth science data - from Vision statement
    • ESIP is to "reduce barriers between data providers and data users" - Goal 1 of strategic plan
    • ESIP is to promote use of technical standards and best practices for data management, stewardship, and application development - Goal 2 of strategic plan
  • Principles for Data users
    • Credit
    • Invite collaboration
    • Responsible use
    • Awareness of caveats or limitations of the data
    • Duty to ask
  • Principles for Data Providers
    • Data Intermediaries (i.e., repositories, value-added providers, etc.)
      • ??
    • Data creators
      • ??

Statement of data stewardship principles and recommended practices

The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP Federation) is a consortium of more than 110 organizations that collect, interpret and develop applications for Earth observation information. It contains NASA, NOAA and USGS data centers, research universities, government research laboratories, supercomputing facilities, education resource providers, information technology innovators, nonprofit organizations and commercial enterprises. Despite the variety of organizations constituting the ESIP Federation, they are bound by the following common strategic goals [ESIP Federation Strategic Plan (2009-2013), January 30, 2009]:

1. Increase the use and value of Earth science data and information.
2. Act as a facilitating, coordinating and advisory community-led organization to promote the use of Earth science data and information products for the members and the communities they support.
3. Continue to evolve the ESIP Federation (e.g., governance, structure, staffing) to strengthen the ties between Observations, Research and Applications.
4. Promote techniques to articulate and measure the socioeconomic value and benefit of Earth science data, information and applications.

A sub-goal of Goal 1 above is to “Reduce barriers between data providers and data users through IT, training, and standards education.” A sub-goal of Goal 2 above is to “Promote use of technical standards and best practices for data management, stewardship and application development.” The purpose of this document is to articulate data stewardship principles and recommend practices to support these two subtotals of the ESIP Federation. Where conflict exists, these data stewardship principles are superseded by the legal and policy requirements of participating organizations. The principles documented here are based on existing data sharing principles and data and information policies of various U.S. and international organizations. This document is intended to be a “living” document introducing a few basic principles and inviting readers to contribute recommended practices for adoption by members of the ESIP Federation. The principles and practices apply to data creators, data intermediaries and data users, and are discussed in three separate sections below.

1. Data Creators (field experiment projects, research or operational missions, aircraft campaigns, etc.)

• Data creators will have data management plans appropriate to their activities
• Data creators will identify long-term archival organizations where data worthy of preservation will be placed. It must be recognized that data preservation and access should not be afterthoughts and need to be considered while data collection plans are developed.
• To help ensure correct usage of the data by the broad user community, data creators will provide easily accessible information about the data and related mission parameters, including user guides, quality assessments, and other supporting information.
• Data creators will provide complete metadata (defined as all the information necessary for data to be independently understood by users and to ensure proper stewardship of the data) to the data repositories responsible for long-term archival.

2. Data Intermediaries (repositories, value-added providers, etc.)

• There will be full and open exchange of data, metadata and products among the members of the ESIP Federation and users served by its members, recognizing relevant international instruments, national agency policies and legislation, and commercial/proprietary interests.
• Explanation of any necessary restrictions to full and open exchange of data will be made available to users along with the duration for which such restrictions apply.
• The data, metadata and products will be made available to all users on a nondiscriminatory basis.
• All shared data, metadata and products will be made available with minimum time delay.
  • For operational systems, quality control procedures should not introduce unnecessary time delays.
  • For research data, time delays may need to include a limited period of quality control and exclusive use by the data provider. These time delays should nevertheless be minimized.
• Metadata will be made available openly at no cost, to enable users to discover sources of data and information without restriction.
• All shared data, metadata and products will be free of charge or available at no more than cost of reproduction for uses in research and education. Further, all data, metadata and products from government and publicly funded non-government providers will be free of charge or available at no more than cost of reproduction for all users.
• Private sector providers will be encouraged to provide at least a useful subset of their data, metadata and products free of charge or at no more than cost of reproduction for uses in research and education.
• Where necessary, online cost recovery mechanisms will be used, allowing different types of users to understand their access costs.
• Providers will use community-accepted standard formats for data and metadata, and support multiple formats as required through appropriate translation software.
• Providers will clearly indicate terms of distribution to users, including a description of attribution requirements and any restrictions on redistribution. Restrictions on redistribution will be held to a minimum consistent with ensuring appropriate credits and citations, and ensuring provision of appropriate metadata and documentation along with the data to prevent misunderstanding, misrepresentation, misuse, or alteration of data.
• Providers will encourage users to supply impact metrics back to the providers indicating the utility of data, metadata and products they received.
• Data intermediaries will share with data creators any feedback received from users regarding the quality of their data and products.

3. Data Users

• Users will credit and cite all significant data sources and authors, including creators and repositories of the data and products used in their work; users will offer co-authorship as appropriate to data providers, depending on the significance of the providers’ contribution.
• Users will follow any restrictions on redistribution of data that were indicated by the data providers.
• Users will use the data in a manner compatible with the documentation and quality caveats available from the providers.
• Users will supply impact metrics to providers indicating the utility of data, metadata and products they received.
• Users will supply feedback to providers regarding products and services received in order to improve providers’ capabilities over time.
• Users will be open to collaboration with other users by participating in cooperative projects, publishing results promptly, sharing value-added products with other users, providing value-added products to data repositories, etc.
• Users will participate in community groups to promote data and metadata standards and their evolution over time.