Tómas Jóhannesson

Icelandic Meteorological Office

NordForsk/NeGI Workshop

Implementation of Open Access to Scientific Data

14 August 2014

Implementation of Open Access to Scientific Data in the Nordic Center

of Excellence SVALI

Overview

• General considerations• The TRI/ICCC data policy• The SVALI data storage plan• WGMS• GLIMS• The Randolph Glacier Inventory• Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW)• The terminus variations data set of the Iceland

Glaciological Society• Concluding remarks

General considerations

• Types of data• Data ownership• Data access• Grace period• Acknowledgement• Metadata• Future safety and availability

Types of data

• Measurements, e.g. lidar maps of glacier surfaces, time series of temperature at weather stations, remote sensing of sea-ice cover

• Derived quantities such as ice-volume changes, daily, monthly or annual gridded temperature, changes in sea-ice cover over years or decades

• Model results

Data availability

Data ownership and access• Private• Sharing within a group• Commercially available• Public domain

Public domain data• The concept has its origin in software development• GNU General Public License• Creative Commons license• Public access brings a new dimension of usefulness,

the key is ease of use, unforseen and unplanned use and reciprocity

The TRI/ICCC Data Policy

The TRI/ICCC Data policy

Data DefinitionNCoE ICCC data are those data generated during the duration of the three individual NCoEs within NCoE ICCC (October 2010 – September 2015) ...Data Availability and ExchangeIn order to maximise the benefit of data gathered under NCoE ICCC, it is required that NCoE ICCC data are made available fully, freely, openly, and on the shortest feasible timescale ...MetadataMetadata are essential to the discovery, access, and effective use of data. All NCoE ICCC data must be accompanied by metadata ...Data PreservationRecognising that the true value of scientific data is often realised long after they have been collected, it is essential to ensure long-term preservation and sustained access to data ...Data AcknowledgmentTo recognise the valuable role of data providers (and scientists who collect or prepare data) and to facilitate repeatability of experiments in keeping with the scientific method, users of SVALI data must formally acknowledge data authors (contributors) and sources. ...

The Data Storage Plan

From the SVALI handbook:... The SVALI NCoE adheres to an open data policy. This means that data generated by simulation models or gathered in the field measurement campaigns as a SVALI activity, are freely available to all SVALI participants and to other scientists as appropriate on the shortest feasible timescale in accordance with the TRI/ICCC data policy. To facilitate SVALI data storage and sharing, data providers are requested to submit a data description (or, meta-data) by filling in Template T.9. and send it to the dissemination team at GEUS (Signe B. Andersen siba@geus.dk and Signe Hillerup Larsen shl@geus.dk). The meta-data will be available at the SVALI website http://ncoe-svali.org/data. Data that have been collected within SVALI, that are of international importance, and should be stored for longer term than the duration of the SVALI NCoE will be submitted to appropriate data centers, depending on the nature of the data. Existing data centers, such as the National Snow & Ice Data Center (“www.nsidc.org”) or the World Glacier Monitoring Service (“www.wgms.ch”), will be used, rather than the SVALI NcoE creating own storage of data. ...

Hoffellsjökull, SE-Vatnajökull

Tungna-fells-jökull

Snæfellsjökull

LiDAR2008

Downwasting of Hofsjökull

Summary

• Data availability and terms of use are important for scientific data

• Public domain distribution has become widely accepted as the appropriate management of scientific data

• This can be combined with proper acknowledgement of data providers

• For this to be possible, scientist need to accept that the value of their data is not diminished by the use of others

Öræfajökukull2011

Thank youfor your attention!