NEEM data and publication policy

Prepared for the SC meeting by Sune Olander Rasmussen, Copenhagen, olander@gfy.ku.dk. Final version adopted by the SC February 1, 2009.

An important part of the data policy is the web-based information sharing and the consortia minutes that make it possible for all collaborating scientists in the NEEM project (the NEEM community) to obtain details about all existing and upcoming NEEM data sets.

Consortia should outline publication plans in the consortia minutes, and are encouraged to focus the publication plans on scientific ideas rather that data sets. This will enable other NEEM colleagues to join the work on proposed papers, thereby strengthening inter-consortia collaboration.

Upon completion of a data set or model result, a number of publications will be prepared in accordance with the publication plan. Until these publications have been published, the data are available only to the NEEM community. The publication plan must of course be respected and the data shared only within the NEEM community, but should be openly and widely shared within the entire NEEM community. Unpublished data can only be shown in presentations at conferences etc. with the consent of the person/group responsible for the measurements.

NEEM is an IPY project, and in accordance with the IPY data polity, all data should be made available (http://www.ipy.org/index.php?ipy/detail/ipy_data_policy/). For the NEEM project, data should be made public when publication has occurred, or if the SC decides that a data set should be released without being a part of a publication. In the latter case, the data set should be published in a citable way.

In general, data should be openly available within a year from the completion of a processed data set. Data sets are distributed via the NEEM web page and submitted to a data repository selected by the SC, e.g. WDC-Paleo, and to other data repositories if requested by national funding bodies. Make sure that only one version of each data file is circulated. Use of the WDC-Paleo data file template is recommended.

Abstracts of all papers that include NEEM data not previously published must be approved by the SC prior to submission. An abstract of the paper (including an author list and an outline of which data are presented) is sent to the SC chair who circulates the abstract to the NEEM-members mailing list. If no objections are received within the deadline set, the SC chair approves the request.

The person/group responsible for the measurements can present and discuss unpublished data in meeting abstracts and at meetings without obtaining approval. However, the data as such should not appear in printed abstracts, and the presenter should ensure that Powerpoint presentations etc. with unpublished data are not made publicly available.

Availability:

  • When a paper is accepted by a journal, the first author must supply a preprint which is made available to all NEEM collaborators via a password-protected section of the home page and an abstract that is made available on the public web page. Upon receipt by the NEEM web responsible, the paper is assigned a number in the series of NEEM publications.
  • When a paper is published, the first author must provide a final version to be placed on the public NEEM web page or a password-protected subpage if necessary for copyright reasons.
Read more at the NEEM publications page.

Acknowledgements

All papers featuring NEEM data with a NEEM collaborator as (co-)author must contain a standard acknowledgement paragraph crediting the funding bodies that contributed to the NEEM logistics effort. The standard paragraph is available on the publication page. Additional acknowledgements to science funding may be added.