COPDESS Statement of Commitment

Earth and space science data are special resources, critical for advancing science and addressing societal challenges – from assessing and responding to natural hazards and climate change, to use of energy and natural resources, to managing our oceans, air, and land. The need for and value of open data have been encoded in major Earth and space science society position statements, foundation initiatives, and more recently in statements and directives from governments and funding agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and elsewhere. This statement of commitment signals important progress and a continuing commitment by publishers and data facilities to enable open data in the Earth and space sciences.

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Connecting scholarly publication more firmly with data facilities thus has many advantages for science in the 21st century and is essential in meeting the aspirations of open, available, and useful data envisioned in the position statements and funder guidelines. To strengthen these connections, with the aim of advancing the mutual interests of authors, publishers, data facilities, and end-users of the data, a recent Earth and space science data and publishing conference, supported by the National Science Foundation, was held at AGU Headquarters on 2-3 October 2014. It brought together major publishers, data facilities, and consortia in the Earth and space sciences, as well as governmental, association, and foundation funders. Further informational meetings were held with Earth and space science societies, publishers, facilities, and librarians that were not present at the October meeting. Collectively the publishers, data facilities, and consortia focused on open data for Earth and space science formed a working group: Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences. As one outcome, this group collectively endorsed the following commitments to make meaningful progress toward the goals above. We encourage other publishers and data facilities and consortia to join in support.

Signatory data facilities, publishers, and societies, in order to meet the need for expanding access to data and to help authors, make the following commitments:

– We reaffirm and will ensure adherence to our existing repository, journal, and publisher policies and society position statements regarding data sharing and archiving of data, tools, and models.

– We encourage journals, publishers, and societies that do not have such statements to develop them to meet the aspirations of open access to research data and to support the integrity and value of published research. Examples of policies and position statements from signatory journals and societies are listed here.

– Earth and space science data should, to the greatest extent possible, be stored in appropriate domain repositories that are widely recognized and used by the community, follow leading practices, and can provide additional data services. We will work with researchers, funding agencies, libraries, institutions, and other stakeholders to direct data to appropriate repositories, respecting repository policies.

– Where it is not feasible or practical to store data on community-approved repositories, journals should encourage and support archiving of data using community-established leading practices, which may include supplementary material published with an article. These should strive to follow existing NISO guidelines.

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Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences

The newly formed Coalition for Data Publication in the Earth and Space Sciences intends to provide an organizational framework for Earth and space science publishers and data facilities to jointly implement and promote common policies and procedures for the publication and citation of data across Earth Science journals.