The aim of this community is to collect the data and data documentation produced by the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX). CLEX is a major initiative funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). This Centre of Excellence is an international research consortium of five Australian universities and a network of outstanding national and international partner organizations.

(Click on 'read more' to see our policies for users and contributors)

CLEX Data Collection policies and guidelines

Table of contents

1. Guidance for end users
2. Guidance for contributors
3. Authorship Policy
4. Retention and retraction policy

 

Guidance for end  users

 

Who can use

Anyone! All records available on the CLEX Data Collection are required to have an open access license.

 

How to use

We request that any published research stemming from a record within the CLEX Data Collection appropriately cite the source as provided in the record description.

Questions should be directed to the main contact for the record.

Disclaimer

While the curation team endeavours to maintain the usability and scientific validity of all records that are part of the CLEX Data Collection, we accept no liability for the damages arising from the use of the data.

The curation team will regularly maintain the collection and update the title and description of records in instances where there are scientific errors as per the procedures described in the Retention and Retraction Policy.

It is the end user's responsibility to check whether the data is suitable for their intended use and if there are updates to the record on the CLEX Data Collection that they are using.

 

Guidance for data contributors

 

Who can submit entries

The curation team accepts “any data” contribution from CLEX researchers, students and collaborators which is relevant to climate science.

All authors must comply with all applicable laws and not be intentionally malicious. Data contributors should adhere to the Authorship Policy and not violate any prior license agreement. 

Should the dataset contain any sensitive data, the authors must comply with the disclosure conditions of any prior ethics agreement.

Authors are encouraged to follow community standards and conventions. We strongly encourage the use of file formats which are also endorsed by the community and avoiding proprietary formats as they are not in line with Open Access policies.

Authors can create their own record on Zenodo under their own account (an ORCID can be used to create a Zenodo account) and then submit the record to the Collection.

As an alternative the Collection curators can create a record for the data owner. Please, note that only the owner of the original Zenodo record is allowed to amend the record.

 

Required description expected from contributors

All data submissions will require a description that is adequate for an end user who might want to explore and use the data. Therefore, mandatory content includes:

• Description of dataset including:

  • the context in which the data was created

  • data and code sources used to generate the data

  • temporal and spatial extension and resolution

  • if possible, list of all the variables included in the dataset

  • if more than one version exists, how they differ

  • what is the best use for this data and more importantly if the data is not suited to a particular use

• Valid contact details for end users and the curation team to ask follow-up questions. These contact details should be kept up-to-date.

• Ideally the authors should also provide their ORCID for tracking citations of the contribution

• Keywords for searchability 

• License agreement

• If the record is only referencing a dataset already published in another repository, than rather then the data itself, the author should upload a readme file. Uploading at least one file is a requirement in Zenodo for publication. In this case also the original DOI should be listed in the record rather that a new one minted. Please be careful because minting a DOI for an existing record breaks the Zenodo policies, as well as ours.

A dataset can have several authors. All authors should have made a significant contribution to the data. A person is not an author if their contribution only constitutes of:

• supervision

• the provision of funding, data, materials, infrastructure or access to equipment

• the provision of routine technical support, technical advice or technical assistance

• providing feedback or a review of the dataset

 

We created a step-by-step guide  and a checklist to show how to upload a record.

 

Review Process

All submissions will be reviewed to ensure documentation requirements are met. 

Once all requirements have been met, the curator will either link the existing Zenodo record to the CLEX Code Collection or create a new Zenodo record.
 

Follow-up Questions

Authors to the CLEX Code Collection agree to be contactable by the curating team and end users whenever issues are detected. Ideally, authors should respond to queries in a timely manner. 

Issues that impact the scientific validity of the data will have a warning flag added to the Zenodo record to ensure that end users are aware. 

Authors are encouraged, but are not required to answer questions that end users may have regarding their dataset. Authors must keep their contact details up to date in the Zenodo record. Authors must provide their preferred contact method for queries about the dataset, which may include an email address or persistent researcher ID (e.g., ORCID).

 

Procedures for updates 

Any new version of the data will require a new version to be recorded in Zenodo. This is particularly true if the actual data is hosted on Zenodo. The contribution will be reviewed again. In some exceptional cases, the author might be required to create an entire new record. The curators of the CLEX Data Collection will guide the authors on the process if this exception applies

If there are frequent end user queries on the dataset, the curator will seek an amendment of the record description from the author.

 

Authorship policy

 

You can only submit a dataset for which you are an author. 

An author is a person who has created or modified a dataset in a substantial way, either as an individual or part of a group effort. 

A dataset can have several co-authors. All co-authors should have made a significant contribution to the data. Each author needs to give their agreement to be listed as an author. In addition, if some co-authors are not from CLEX, they should give their agreement for the code to be listed under the CLEX Data Collection.

It is possible to define contributors in the CLEX Data Collection, some of the potential contributor roles are:

• Reviewer 

  To qualify, the review needs to be a substantial effort, which results in improvements/changes being applied to the dataset. 

• Curator 

  Person tasked with reviewing, enhancing, cleaning, or standardizing the data and the associated metadata in a way that goes beyond the ordinary curation of the data collection

• Content-expert 

  Someone who contributed mainly by providing advice/review on the scientific validity of the data

These definitions are based on the authorship and co-authorship policy on the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018.

You can only submit a modified dataset if the modifications add value to the data. For example, if you have applied some correction to an existing dataset, this effectively add values to the original data. Re-gridding a dataset is not enough to consider this a new dataset. The best option in this case is to cite the original data and the re-gridding code.

When submitting a modified dataset, the authors are responsible to ensure the licensing and ethical terms of the original data allow for that submission. 

 

Retention and retraction policy

 

CLEX will actively maintain the Data Collection and retain your records for its lifetime (end of 2024). After that CLEX cannot guarantee that the curation of the Collection will continue. The Data Collection will continue to exist on Zenodo and the records will be retained provided they do not violate the Zenodo policies. The retention time for Zenodo is the lifetime of their host laboratory CERN, currently funded for the next 20 years. For more information or updates check the Zenodo policies page.

 

Record removal

Records will be immediately removed, if the curator finds they are in breach of the authorship policies.

 

Amendment procedure

In case of significant scientific errors:

• The Collection curator will warn the contact author and establish a course of action to amend the erroneous data.

• The curator will then put a warning on the record stating the nature of the issue and the potential timeframe for resolution.

• If the record is amended, a new version will be published and the older one retained for provenance reasons. The title of the erroneous version will be altered to notify clearly that it is retracted, and a summary of the issue and its resolution will also be added to the description.

• If no amendment/correction is made, the record will be removed from the collection. Note that any retraction will only remove the record from the collection and not the original source (e.g. another repository, the author’s own Zenodo account etc.)

• Where the curation team has ownership of the original Zenodo record, we will alter the title and description to reflect the retraction state.