The ESRF Council has recently endorsed the implementation of a Data Policy for data taken at the ESRF beamlines. The Data Policy is based on the PaNdata Data Policy which was a deliverable of the European FP7 project PaN-data Europe delivered in 2011. The Data Policy defines the ESRF as the custodian of raw data and metadata. This means the ESRF will automatically collect metadata for all experiments carried out on its beamlines, including the beamlines from Collaborating Research Groups. The metadata will be stored in the ICAT metadata catalogue which can be accessed online to browse and download (meta)data. The experimental team will have sole access to the data during a three-year embargo period, renewable if necessary. After the embargo, the data will be released under a CC-BY-4 licence with open access to anyone who has registered with the ESRF data portal.

The ESRF data policy comes very timely as the scientific landscape in Europe and worldwide changes. Recently the Springer group announced that all their journals (which include Nature and related publications) will require data in publications be covered by a data policy. The ESRF data policy will enable users to publish results derived from data taken at the ESRF without further action on their part other than referring to the ESRF data policy.

It will be necessary to accept the Data Policy from the next proposal round in 2016 when applying for beamtime. Accepting the policy does not mean that all beamlines are yet able to implement the policy.

Implementation

Implementing the policy involves a number of steps and these will take time to implement. The deadline for implementing the data policy on all ESRF beamlines is in 2020 at the restart after the big shutdown to install and commission the EBS. In order to keep users informed of progress of the implementation of the data policy the following table summarises the state of the implementation on the different beamlines. If a beamline does not appear in this list then it does not implement the data policy yet.

Any questions concerning the Data Policy or its implementation can be addressed to datapolicy@esrf.fr.

  Data Policy Implementation
Beamline Status Techniques Metadata Collection* Data archiving* Raw Data in HDF5* Open access to data*
ID01 KMAP Implemented      
BM01A          
BM01B          
ID02          
BM02          
ID03          
BM05 Tomography In progress      
ID06-LVP          
ID06 Tomography In progress      
BM08          
ID09          
ID10          
ID11 Tomography In progress      
ID12          
ID13          
BM14          
BM15A          
BM15B          
ID16A-NI Fluo, Tomo Implemented   Implemented  
ID16B-NA

Fluo,Tomo

 In progress      
ID17 MRT, Tomography Implemented      
ID18          
ID19 Tomography In progress      
ID20   In progress        
ID21 Microscopy Implemented        
ID22          
ID23-1 MX Implemented      
ID23-2 MX Implemented      
BM23          
ID24          
BM25A          
BM25B          
ID26          
BM26A          
BM26B          
ID27          
ID28          
BM28          
ID29 MX Implemented      
BM29 BIOSAXS Implemented      
ID30A-1 MX Implemented      
ID30A-3 MX Implemented   Implemented  
ID30B MX Implemented      
BM30A          
BM30B          
ID31          
ID32   In progress      
BM32          

*Techniques covered - lists which techniques are currently concerned by the Data Policy
*Metadata collection - status of metadata collection and storage in metadata catalogue for the listed techniques (orange = planned / in progress, green = implemented, grey = not planned / implemented yet)
*Data archiving - status of long term archiving in tape library (green = data are being archived for 10 years in tape archive)
*Open access of data - indicates if data is open access (green) or still under embargo (red), or no data archived (grey)