NOAA Data Policy

Special Award Conditions for Data Sharing

  1. Data Sharing: Environmental data collected or created under this Grant, Cooperative Agreement, or Contract must be made publicly visible and accessible in a timely manner, free of charge or at minimal cost that is no more than the cost of distribution to the user, except where limited by law, regulation, policy, or national security requirements. Data are to be made available in a form that would permit further analysis or reuse: data must be encoded in a machine-readable format, preferably using existing open format standards; data must be sufficiently documented, preferably using open metadata standards, to enable users to independently read and understand the data. The location (internet address) of the data should be included in the final report. Pursuant to NOAA Information Quality Guidelines, data should undergo quality control (QC) and a description of the QC process and results should be referenced in the metadata.
  2. Timeliness: Data accessibility must occur no later than publication of a peer-reviewed article based on the data, or two years after the data are collected and verified, or two years after the original end date of the grant (not including any extensions or follow-on funding), whichever is soonest, unless a delay has been authorized by the NOAA funding program.
  3. Disclaimer: Data produced under this award and made available to the public must be accompanied by the following statement: "These data and related items of information have not been formally disseminated by NOAA, and do not represent any agency determination, view, or policy."
  4. Failure to Share Data: Failing or delaying to make environmental data accessible in accordance with the submitted Data Management Plan, unless authorized by the NOAA Program, may lead to enforcement actions, and will be considered by NOAA when making future award decisions. Funding recipients are responsible for ensuring these conditions are also met by sub-recipients and subcontractors.
  5. Funding acknowledgement: Federal funding sources shall be identified in all scholarly publications. An Acknowledgements section shall be included in the body of the publication stating the relevant Grant Programs and Award Numbers. In addition, funding sources shall be reported during the publication submission process using the FundRef mechanism if supported by the Publisher.
  6. Manuscript submission: The final pre-publication manuscripts of scholarly publications produced with NOAA funding shall be submitted to the NOAA Institutional Repository after acceptance, and no later than upon publication, of the paper by a journal. NOAA will produce a publicly-visible catalog entry directing users to the published version of the article. After an embargo period of one year after publication, NOAA shall make the manuscript itself publicly visible, free of charge, while continuing to direct users to the published version of record.
  7. Data Citation: Publications based on data, and new products derived from source data, must cite the data used according to the conventions of the Publisher, using unambiguous labels such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). All data and derived products that are used to support the conclusions of a peer-reviewed publication must be made available in a form that permits verification and reproducibility of the results.