1. General principles
1.1 Acceptance of this policy is a condition of the
award of beamtime at the ISIS Neutron and Muon facility (ISIS).
1.2 This data management policy pertains to the
curation, access, ownership, use and storage of data collected at ISIS.
1.3 Users must not attempt to access,
exploit or distribute ISIS data unless they are entitled to do so under the
terms of this policy.
1.4 Deliberate infringements of the
policy may lead to denial of access to data and/or denial of future beamtime
requests.
2. Definitions
2.1 The term ‘raw data’ refers to the
original neutron and muon data and neutron image data collected from neutron
and muon detectors and imaging cameras.
2.2 The term ‘facility generated
reduced data’ refers to raw data that have been automatically processed by
facility software with the purpose of, for example, removing unwanted signals
in the raw data. Data manually reduced by the users of the facility are not covered
by this term.
2.3 The term ’metadata’ is
information pertaining to data collected from experiments performed on ISIS
instruments and data collected from creating facility generated reduced data.
This includes (but is not limited to) the context of the experiment, scripts
used to generate reduced data, the experimental team (in accordance with the
Data Protection Act), experimental conditions and other logistical information.
2.4 The term ‘result data’ refers to
data and intellectual property arising from the manual reduction of raw data
and associated metadata, and from the analysis of raw data, facility generated
reduced data and associated metadata.
2.5 The term ‘principal investigator’
(PI) pertains to the PI identified on the ISIS experiment proposal.
2.6 The term ‘experimental team’
includes the PI and any other person to whom the PI designates the right to
access resultant raw data, facility generated reduced and associated metadata.
2.7 The term ‘on-line catalogue’
pertains to a computer database of metadata containing links to raw data files,
that can be accessed by a variety of methods, including (but not limited to)
www-based browsers.
2.8 The term ‘DAaaS’ stands for Data
Analysis as a Service and pertains to a platform that users can access to
manually analyse and reduce data.
2.9 The term ‘long-term’ means a
minimum of ten years.
2.10 The term ‘medium-term’ means a
minimum of 6 months.
2.11
The term ‘curation’ denotes the long-term storage, backup and protection of
data in a manner that respects and guarantees the prescribed access-rights.
3. Raw data, facility generated reduced data and associated metadata
3.1 Free and commercial access to
ISIS
3.1.1 All raw data and associated
metadata obtained as a result of free (non-commercial) access to ISIS, will be
treated as described below, with ISIS acting as the custodian.
3.1.2 All raw data, facility
generated reduced data and associated metadata obtained as a result of
‘commercial-in-confidence’ access to ISIS will be owned exclusively by the
commercial user. Commercial users must agree with their relevant
instruments scientists how they wish their raw data, facility generated reduced
data and metadata to be managed before the start of any experiment.
3.2 Curation of raw data and associated
metadata
3.2.1 All raw data will be created in
well-defined formats, for which the means of reading the data will be made
available by the Facility.
3.2.2 Metadata associated with raw
data that is automatically captured by instruments will be curated either
within the raw data files, within an associated on-line catalogue, or within
both.
3.2.3 Raw data and metadata will be
stored initially on instrument-related computers, and will be migrated or
copied to archival facilities for long-term curation.
3.3 Storing of facility generated
reduced data and associated metadata
3.3.1 All facility generated reduced
data will be created in well-defined formats that are readable at the time of
creation either by facility or non-facility software, or both.
3.3.2 Facility generated reduced data
will be stored on medium-term storage, subject to volume restrictions.
3.4 Concerning access to raw data and
associated metadata
3.4.1 Raw data and metadata beyond the period that it is stored
on instrument-related computers will long-term be accessible and searchable
from the on-line catalogue.
3.4.2 Access to raw data and the
associated metadata obtained from an experiment is restricted to the experimental team for a period of three years
after the end of the experiment. Thereafter, it will become available to the
wider community under the
CC-BY license that obliges users to acknowledge ISIS and cite Digital Unique Identifiers
(DOI) that are linked to ISIS data. Any PI
that wishes their data to remain ‘restricted access’ for a longer period will
be required to make a special case to the Director of ISIS. Any PI who wishes their data to be made
publicly accessible before the end of the 3 year period can ask ISIS to enable
this.
3.5 Concerning access to facility
generated reduced data and associated metadata
3.5.1 Facility generated
reduced data and associated metadata will be accessible from the DAaaS
platform.
3.6 Concerning access to raw data,
facility generated reduced data and associated metadata
3.6.1 Access to the on-line catalogue
and the DAaaS platform will be restricted to those who register with STFC/ISIS
as users.
3.6.2 It is the responsibility of the
PI to ensure that the experiment number (RB number) is correctly entered into
the metadata for each raw data set, in order to correctly associate each data
set with the PI. If this is not done, the experimental team may not be
able to access the data via the on-line catalogue and the DAaaS platform, and
other users may inadvertently be given access rights to the data.
3.6.3 Appropriate STFC staff (e.g.
instrument scientists, computing group members) may be given access to any ISIS
data or metadata for facility-related
purposes. ISIS undertakes to preserve the confidentiality of such data for the
3 year embargo period.
3.6.4 The on-line catalogue
will enable the linking of experimental data to experimental proposals.
Access to proposals will only ever be provided to the experimental team and
appropriate STFC staff, unless otherwise authorized by the PI (with the exception of those parts of the
online proposal which are flagged as publicly accessible within the proposal
system).
4. Result data
4.1 Ownership of result data
4.1.1 Ownership of all result data
derived from users manually reducing raw data and analysing raw data, or both,
is determined by the contractual obligations of the person(s) performing the
analysis.
4.2 Storing and curation of result
data
4.2.1 It will not be the
responsibility of ISIS to ensure that software to read / manipulate result data
is available.
4.2.2 Result data created by users of
the DAaaS platform will be stored on medium-term storage, subject to volume
restrictions.
4.2.3 For STFC staff, a service is provided to upload result data and associated
metadata for long-term storage, subject to volume restrictions. ISIS currently does not provide any such
facility for non-STFC staff.
4.3 Access to result data
4.3.1 Access to the result data of
analyses performed on raw data and metadata is restricted to the person or
persons performing the analyses, unless otherwise requested by those persons.
5. Good practice for metadata capture and result data storage
5.1 The experimental team is encouraged
to ensure that experimental metadata are as complete as possible, as this will
enhance the possibilities for them to search for, retrieve and interpret their
own data in the future.
5.2 ISIS undertakes to provide
facilities for the capture of such metadata items that are not automatically
captured by an instrument, in order to facilitate recording the fullest
possible description of the raw data.
5.3 Researchers who aim to carry out analyses of ISIS data made
available after the embargo period should, in addition to citing the data DOI
also, where possible, contact the original PI to inform them and suggest a
collaboration if appropriate.
5.4 PIs and researchers are
encouraged to make result data they generate open access, and to link such data
to available ISIS data DOIs.
6. Publication information
6.1 For STFC staff, references for
publications related to experiments carried out at ISIS must be deposited in
the STFC e-Pubs system http://epubs.cclrc.ac.uk/ within six months of the publication
date, or during any new application for beamtime, whichever is the earlier.
6.2 All publications related to
experiments carried out at ISIS are obliged to acknowledge ISIS and cite data
DOIs of the experiments.
DOI for this policy: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3827817.
Links to previous Data Policy versions
Prior to March 2020
