FAIR USE POLICY -- COBRA North America 2003 (Provisional) 

Data in the archive may be preliminary or released.


Data Policies for Preliminary Data

Preliminary data will be available to all COBRA investigators and to all
collaborators who contribute data.  These datasets are intended for investigation
of science objectives including QA/QC, formulation of hypotheses, and synthesis.
**Users have a number of responsiblities that attach to preliminary science team
data:** (1) to insure that they are accessing the most updated data; (2) to 
communicate in advance and during their studies with primary producers of the 
data, to insure transparency and to avoid overlaps; (3) to share results with the
team at our electronic science team meetings, to be held from time to time after
conclusion of the mission; and (4) to follow the "released data" protocol below
once data are released.

Note that "data" as used here refers to observations, metadata, and model results
alike.

Data Policies for Released Data

It is anticipated that the full data set will be released approximately 12 months
after the mission is completed.  Some of the data may be published (no
restrictions apply) but most will be  publicly available but unpublished 
and remain subject to revision.  

By using the unpublished data, all users of the data, members of 
the team or of the public, agree to adhere to the following policies.


The datasets are freely available and we encourage others to use them.  

Users of unpublished data have the responsibility to keep primary
personnel and mission management informed of how they are using the
data and of any publication plans.  The data source must be acknowledged
as a citation and usually also in the acknowledgments.  If team members feel that 
those who produced the data should be offered participation as authors, 
authors will be informed and we assume that an agreement on such matters 
will be reached prior to publishing the data.  If work directly competes 
with analysis by those producing the data, we may ask that the data producers
have the opportunity to submit a manuscript before an external one that 
uses unpublished data. 


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Important note: The datasets may be updated or reprocessed from time to time.  

It is the users' responsibility to insure that their publications
contain the most recent revision of the data.  Be sure to check before 
submitting a manuscript. This requirement is not normally waived and obsolete
data may not ususally be published.  
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