Data Policy for ZFMK Data Center

ZFMK Data Center recognizes the fundamental importance of research data and its documentation (hereinafter referred to as “Data”) to maintain high quality research and scientific integrity. It strives to achieve the highest standards in this regard. The ZFMK Data Center further acknowledges that correct and easily retrievable data is an essential basis of any research project. They are necessary for the traceability and reproducibility of research processes and their results. Data has a long-term benefit for research and science and the potential for comprehensive re-use and dissemination in society.

The guiding principle of the ZFMK data center is Open Access to its content for the scientific community.

• ZFMK Data Center is operated by the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig – Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity, Bonn, Germany for the benefit of the scientific community, stakeholders and the general public.
• The content is defined as data from species-related biodiversity research.
• Data are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
• Data might be password protected for a moratorium period.
• Format and description of data (metadata) must ensure its most widespread and easiest use.
• Data include a bibliographic citation. Users are urged to properly quote this citation when using data from the system.
• The reliable long-term access to the data is assured by using persistent identifier (DOI).
• The system is open to individual scientists, institutes or projects for data archiving and publication.
• Data up to a limit of 5 GB are free of charge. Costs for data volumes exceeding this volume will be subject to negotiation on the basis of hardware costs.

• Long-term availability (>10 years) of data in ZFMK data center is assured through a commitment of the host institute ZFMK (das brauchen wir auch noch) .
• The ZFMK data center is responsible for the technical quality, operation and consistency of the content.
• Persistent identification, data publication and widespread distribution is performed by the networking functionality and webservices on the Internet using international standards.

• With the transfer of data to the ZFMK data center, the ZFMK data center receives the right to manage the transferred data in accordance with the Preservation Plan. This includes copying, transforming, and storing the data.
• In the case of data changes or transformations, all steps are saved in the management software via the change history.
• The rights to publish the data and the accompanying licenses are negotiated with the data provider and enforced for each data entry or parts of it.

Data archiving includes:

• Collection and research data from archives/collections/databases including multimedia data
• Metadata like provenance information, references, etc. (see: Overview of Data and Metadata)

Contributors have agreed that:

• Any disclosure of information will comply to the terms and spirit of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
• No information is disclosed which may threaten wild population of plants, fungi and animals protected under CITES.

Data are archived as described in the Dataflow for Preservation of Digital Information at ZFMK Data Center. As soon as data become available and are validated, the providers are urged to submit the data in agreement with the import format. Any type of data must always be accompanied by a description (metadata) allowing future users to understand and process the data at any time. The granularity and format of data sets have to be defined in agreement between the principle investigator (PI) and the data manager. The export format is tab-delimited .csv-files or .xml-files (ABCD-Format).

• Data submitted for archiving have to be documented properly; documentation is archived together with each dataset.
• The scientific quality is always in the responsibility of the PI or the authors.
• Technical quality control, i.e. completeness of metadata, consistence of formats and correctness of download is in the responsibility of the data managers.
• After import, the PI/authors is requested to proofread data sets and submit corrections to the data manager.

• The data providers agree that the data archived in the ZFMK Data Center will be made available on the Internet (e.g. portals, search engines, online catalogs) through suitable technical facilities. This is part of the agreement on the use of the data (see above: Transfer of Custody).
• Unpublished data are password protected by default; password protection for published data is set on request for a moratorium period.
• Providers may decide to withdraw data from the archive as long as it is not published.
• Metadata are always freely accessible under the CC0 license waiver.
• In accordance with EU data policy and funding requirements, all data collected during a project will be published two years after the end of the project; regulations may differ in agreement between coordinator, partners and funding organization.

• Daily incremental backup and every 15 weeks full backup located in different buildings with a distance of 1 km, ensures data safety and integrity.

das steht noch auf der technischen dokumentationsseite im public GFBio wiki: Computing center is run by ZFMK, cooperations exist with Jülich Supercomputing Centre and University of Cologne regarding computing technischen dokumentationsseite

Status: October 2020

• No data submitted to ZFMK Datacenter and ingested for long-term archiving is deleted. This excludes demands for privacy policies according to DGPR.

This text may be used as a draft for project specific data policies.