NERC grant-funded researchers

The key principles of NERC data policy are:

• environmental data produced by NERC-funded activities will be made openly available for others to use
• all environmental data of long-term value generated through NERC-funded activities must be submitted to a NERC Environmental Data Centre for long-term management and dissemination
• all NERC-funded grants must work with their assigned NERC Data Centre to agree and implement a detailed data management plan, ensuring that all data of long-term value is submitted to the data centre in an agreed format and with all necessary metadata

The EDS is a network of five NERC-supported environmental data centres covering a range of discipline areas: 

• British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) (marine) 
• Centre for Environmental Data Analysis1 (CEDA) (atmospheric, Earth observation, and solar and space physics) 
• Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) (terrestrial and fresh water) 
• National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) (geoscience) 
• UK Polar Data Centre (PDC) (polar and cryosphere)

Your assigned data centre will contact you after your NERC grant funding has been approved. It should usually be clear from the discipline area you are working in which NERC data centre is relevant to your area. If you are uncertain or if your research area is multi-disciplinary, then we will need to work with you to identify the appropriate data centre.  

The requirements for data management activities described in the NERC data policy and detailed in the associated data policy guidance notes form part of the terms and conditions that apply to NERC award holders and their research institutions.

Those who do not meet the data management requirements described within points 11 to 13 of the policy face being sanctioned by NERC and risk having award payments withheld or becoming ineligible for future funding. 

Your grant application contained a one-page ODMP in which you were asked to identify datasets likely to be made available to NERC environmental data centres for archiving and re-use at the end of the grant. ODMPs (and cases for support) for successful proposals are made available to the data centres, which use them to draft a full data management plan (DMP), in collaboration with the principal investigator. NERC data centres will work with you to create a more extensive, full DMP that captures any additional information they need to archive your data and make it available in the long term.

A lead data centre will be identified for research programmes, which will be the primary point of contact for data management issues within the programme. There may be several data centres that receive data from projects within a programme, but this activity will be coordinated through the lead data centre.

The responsibility for data management of the grant lies with the principal investigator.  

The principal investigator can delegate the day-to-day management of data to another member or other members of the research team. However, the principal investigator will remain responsible throughout the grant project.  

You will be assigned a dedicated data centre contact, who will provide you a link to a DS Wizard questionnaire to complete your DMP. You will need to add the details of the data you are creating as a result of the grant funding, including information about data volumes, file formats and any proprietary software used to create the data (and to access it afterwards). They will liaise with you throughout your research project and help you with any queries you may have about what NERC is expecting from you and how to best manage your data.  

One DMP created via the DS Wizard will cover the whole grant. The DS Wizard questionnaire can be shared amongst other project members including principal investigators of child grants, co-investigators and project members, to allow everyone to contribute. 

The DS Wizard questionnaire is a living document so you may add information as it becomes available and update details if they change during your project. It is best to make the DMP a standing item in your programme or project management meetings so you can ensure it is maintained on a regular basis. Inform your data centre of any changes by selecting the relevant option in Chapter 6 (VI) of the questionnaire.  

NGDC has a central email account (ngdc@bgs.ac.uk) to help with any data-related queries. Your assigned data centre contact will also be available to provide guidance and support for everything from setting up your DMP to depositing your data with the data centre, and anything in between.  

If your grant is only partly NERC-funded, you still need to communicate with the NERC Environmental Data Service to discuss your research and the data you expect to generate. You will need to complete a DMP documenting any new data and then use it to agree where your data is best deposited. 

NERC data centres use the NERC data value checklist to appraise data’s long-term value.  To establish which datasets NERC expects you to deposit, you need to document all your data on the DMP and have a discussion about it with your data centre. NGDC will not store copies of research papers; instead, include DOIs of published papers in your metadata when depositing data.

Please note that making data available as supplementary material with the paper is not sufficient in terms of complying with the data policy. You are still expected to offer a copy of data underpinning your research to us.  

The timescale for submission of data sets should be agreed in advance with the data centre at the outset of the project and documented in the DMP. In general, data centres should receive the finalised data as soon after the end of data collection as is possible. The end of data collection is defined as the point at which the data becomes available from an instrument or experiment. It does not mean the end of the NERC-funded project.  

If you have agreed an extension for your grant with NERC, please let NGDC know the new end date so they can arrange to contact you at the appropriate time about your data deposit.  

In general, all data made available by the NERC data centres can be accessed by anyone for any purpose. We may restrict access to some third-party data and can place data under embargo for up to two years, to allow you to carry out your research and to publish the results.

NERC considers that, in most cases, a reasonable embargo period is a maximum of two years from the end of data collection. However, in exceptional circumstances, a longer period may be applicable; for example, if it can be justified by the requirements of the research. The specific embargo period must be agreed in advance with the data centre.

Anyone is allowed to access NERC-funded data, regardless of the purpose for which they intend to use it, including commercial gain. In general, all data held at the NERC EDS is released under the Open Government Licence and it can be accessed by anyone for any purpose. However, for some third-party datasets there may be restrictions on who can access or what can be done with the data. Any such restrictions will be made clear when the data is requested.  

NERC is a public authority and, as such, is subject to FOI legislation. The environmental data held by NERC’s data centres is also classed as ‘environmental information’ under the terms of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs) and there is a presumption that this data will be available to all who request it, unless there is a clear reason, supported by the EIR exceptions, as to why it should be withheld (for example, the release of data might lead to damage to the environment). 

The EIRs do not require that all environmental data has to be made available in all cases. However, there is a presumption that it is in the public interest to release data unless there is a good reason otherwise. This means that a NERC-funded researcher cannot arbitrarily decide who can and cannot have copies of the data they have collected. Please talk to the data centres if you have questions about data access.

When uploading your data via NGDC data portal, the recommended number of files is up to 20 files per session. We advise that the maximum single file size limit is 1 GB. Please note that folders or folder structures containing files cannot be uploaded unless they are compressed into a single zip file. You can upload larger datasets (up to 100 GB) using OneDrive. Please speak to your data centre contact about how to do this.

Datasets exceeding 100 GB can be transferred via FTP, Hard Drive or via the large data portal hosted by CEDA. For more information, talk to your data centre contact.  

If your dataset is relatively small and you don’t want or need a DOI for it, you can upload all your data via the NGDC Data Deposit Application. If it is larger, you may need to divide it into uploadable chunks, either via the data deposit application or OneDrive. Please talk to your data centre contact about your options.  

NGDC provides guidance on naming strategies. Spending time on naming your data will make your data better understood and easily discoverable. Use short yet meaningful file and folder or directory names and provide a ‘readme’ note with your naming strategy, with a list of any acronyms and abbreviations in full. Avoid using special characters in your file names as these may cause problems with uploading the data and when files are used in different operating systems and devices. We recommend replacing forward slashes / with an underscore _ .  

NGDC maintains a list of preferred file formats. Other formats may be ingested but will require additional metadata before they are accepted to the repository. Speak to your NGDC contact if you have questions about the formats you are using.   

The title of your dataset should be a clear and concise indication of its content. Avoid using acronyms and abbreviations; they are better explained in the abstract. A good abstract (minimum 100 characters, maximum 4000) will help the user decide whether the dataset or model will be of interest. Write in plain English and in complete sentences, not in bullet points. Include information on what – where – when – how – why – who. If some data is excluded, explain what and why. 

Completing the fields on the NGDC Data Deposit Application ensures all the standard metadata required is included in order to add your dataset to the NGDC data catalogue. If you need to add other information to make your dataset understandable to other users, please provide it using ‘readme’ notes and upload them alongside your data via the application. In some cases, you may not be required to upload the data itself; even then a metadata entry via the application is required. 

NGDC will add all open datasets to its deposited data catalogue   and in the BGS metadata catalogue, which is also harvested by and made available on the UK Government’s open data portal. NGDC also has the ability to issue digital object identifiers (DOIs) to datasets. Assigning DOIs to datasets means that data users are able to confidently cite data alongside traditional journal papers using the NGDC cited data catalogue.

The benefits for data producers include gaining due academic credit for their efforts to produce these valuable research outputs and the ability to further publicise data in a way that ensures their efforts in creating it are acknowledged.  

Who holds the intellectual property rights (IPR) of the data that a researcher generates depends on who they work for and on their contract of employment. It is normally the employer of the researcher that owns the IPR. If you work for a university, the majority of the time the IPR will belong to the university, but this does depend on your contract of employment.

The requirement to deposit data with a NERC data centre does not affect IPR. Where NERC does not own the IPR, the rights owner will be required to grant to NERC a non-exclusive licence to allow NERC to manage and supply the data for reuse.  

NERC data policy mandates that you must offer a copy of your data to NERC Environmental Data Service. They maintain a list of other NERC-approved repositories. For further information contact your NGDC grants contact. 

NERC doesn’t automatically liaise with PhD students about their individual research projects and associated data, as it is not in general included in their research funding. If they are funded by a ‘regular’ research grant, any resulting data can be offered to the NGDC under that grant ID. However, small amounts of data from doctoral grants may be offered to the EDS and linked to ‘regular’ grant research. If data volumes are larger (several terabytes), EDS may request a contribution towards data ingestion costs.  

If the NERC facility you used is not storing your data in the long term, contact NGDC (ngdc@bgs.ac.uk) to discuss whether your data is suitable to offer to us. In most cases, small amounts of data can be accepted.  

NERC has a network of environmental data centres covering a range of disciplines: 

• British Oceanographic Data Centre (marine) 
• Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, which includes:
  • British Atmospheric Data Centre (atmospheric)
  • NERC Earth Observation Data Centre (Earth observation)
  • UK Solar System Data Centre (solar and space physics) 
• Environmental Information Data Centre (terrestrial and fresh water) 
• Polar Data Centre (polar and cryosphere)

NERC/UKRI’s data policy mandates we keep data for at least 10 years after the completion of the research project. NGDC is a Place of Deposit under the National Archives and has a digital preservation project in place to provide long-term preservation where there is a requirement to store data for longer. 

Datasets must be fully ingested into a NERC Data Centre before a DOI can be minted; this process takes varying amounts of time depending on the data and scientific domain. Datasets that have already been ingested into a NERC data centre may also have DOIs assigned to them, but permission will be sought from the dataset owner before the DOI is minted.

Researchers requesting a DOI should be aware that NERC has certain quality requirements for data to be assigned a DOI and that it is the responsibility of the depositor to ensure the data meets the required level of quality. Details of these requirements are provided in the guidelines for scientists with any further information required provided by NERC data centres on a case-by-case basis.  

If your data has already been transferred to NGDC and there are no issues with data or metadata, it can be minted in as little as in 24 hours. To ensure a smooth process, please contact NGDC (ngdc@bgs.ac.uk) as early as possible so we can prepare to process your request.  

Citations for data generated from NERC-funded research must be referenced through a DOI issued by a NERC data centre, unless alternative arrangements have been agreed as part of the DMP. Some grey literature outside the scope of data policy may be stored in other repositories. For more information contact the NGDC grants manager.  

When data has been assigned a DOI, an email will be sent to the requester confirming the DOI and the form of words for the formal citation for the dataset. It is the researcher’s responsibility to ensure that any data resource referred to in subsequent publications is cited formally, using the form of words suggested by the NERC EDS. Researchers should also encourage others to similarly cite the data. The datasets will then be listed on the NGDC cited data catalogue.

• NERC data citation guidelines 

You will need to upload the new data and we will mint you a new version of the DOI. We are unable to change data linked to an existing DOI.