Project Data Policy

Preamble

The project's data policy is an implementation of the IOC data policy.

The project partners underline the importance of timely, free and unrestricted international sharing of biodiversity data and metadata for the preservation of life, as well as for the advancement of scientific understanding that makes this possible.

The project partners agree with the FAIR Guiding Principles, which means data, metadata and products should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reproducible.

The project partners agree that the data and information resulting from the environmental DNA expeditions will be used for scientific purposes.

Purpose

The purpose of this data policy is to outline the requirements with respect to data sharing, access, preservation, and attribution to facilitate the broad use and reuse of data and information.

Conditions of use

To comply with the FAIR Guiding Principles the data and metadata will be:

• Quality controlled, standardized following Darwin Core, archived in and published via the UNESCO-IOC Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) before the end of the project (i.e. 31 December 2028).
• Licenced under the CC BY 4.0 license, ensures proper attribution and allows others to copy, distribute and make use of the data.
• Each dataset will hold a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and a dataset citation.
• All data and metadata will be made available with minimal restrictions unless for legitimate reasons such as for the protection of endangered species. In that case the location information could be generalized, rather than providing the exact location.
• Raw DNA sequences will be submitted to public repositories (e.g. INSDC).

Definitions

Project partners: UNESCO-IOC, the environmental DNA lab and the marine sites or their partners which have signed the Collaboration Consent Form.