NERC - Natural Environment Research Council

NERC has a position statement on access to published research.

A new data policy was released in January 2011 and guidelines for outline and full DMPs were issued in September 2012.

Guidance notes for policy implementation are available.

NERC-funded students should refer to the Studentship Handbook.

Policy stipulations

Time Limits

Publications must be deposited at the earliest opportunity.

Data should be offered for deposit as soon after the end of data collection as is possible. An embargo period is allowed; this will normally be a maximum of two years from the end of data collection.

Data Plan

A mandatory, single page, Outline Data Management Plan (ODMP) is required for all grant and fellowship applications, according to the NERC guidelines.

Where appropriate, a full DMP will also be written in collaboration with the NERC Environmental Data Centres. A template is provided for this.

Access/Data Sharing

Publications should be made accessible through repositories. All research publications arising from NERC funding must include a statement on how the supporting data and any other relevant research materials can be accessed.

Researchers are expected to offer data for deposit in one of the NERC data centres. NERC will supply the environmental data it holds for free, apart from a few special cases. Information on all data held within the data centres will be made available through the NERC Data Discovery Service.

Long-term Curation

An extensive data centre infrastructure is in place to facilitate long-term curation. NERC will maintain a Data Value Checklist to identify environmental data of long-term value. These criteria will be used to inform all acceptance and disposal decisions made by its data centres.

Monitoring

Compliance with the open access policy will be taken into consideration when considering further applications for funding.

Those funded by NERC who do not meet the data policy requirements risk having award payments withheld or becoming ineligible for future funding from NERC.

Support services

Guidance

Guidance notes on the data policy have been provided.

Support for researchers on data creation and management is provided through the specialist data centres.

Repository

NERC has established a centralised e-print research repository - NORA: the NERC Open Research Archive.

Data Centre

The NERC data centres support curation of environmental data holdings of long-term value.

Costs

No note is made of how any publications fees should be met.

Funding applications must  identify all resources needed to implement the Data Management Plan.

“Original concept and UK funder details provided by the Digital Curation Centre:  http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/overview-funders-data-policies”