Data submission

BODC relies on the expertise of the data originators to supply fully processed, quality controlled data sets with supporting comprehensive metadata.

When data analysis has been completed, please send a copy of your data together with associated documentation to BODC. The following is a summary of the submission process. Further information can be obtained from our guidelines on submitting data to BODC   or by contacting Arwen Bargery.

Data can be sent as attached files via email to Arwen Bargery. BODC has the capacity to safely receive email attachments up to 10MB in size. However, this limit is the acceptable level set by our IT department. Data originators are advised to check with their own IT service managers regarding allowable file size transfer by this method.

Alternatively, data sets can be copied onto floppy disk, CDROM or Zip disk and send to Arwen Bargery at the British Oceanographic Data Centre, Joseph Proudman Building , 6 Brownlow Street , Liverpool L3 5DA.

We can accept most file formats. Microsoft Excel files or text files are the most commonly used. Please ask if you are unsure whether we can deal with your file format.

Please ensure that the following information is in or linked to the data files

IMPORTANT — Please include Microsoft Word or text document containing

• The name and institution of the data originator and the principal investigator
• Specific details of sampling methods used
• Specific details of any instruments used
• Details of analytical procedures employed
• Details of any problems encountered along with comments on data quality
• A list of the associated data files

With prior arrangement BODC has the capacity to process some data types on behalf of the project. In this case raw data files can be submitted to BODC for processing. BODC also encourages AMT scientists to submit a copy of their raw data files in specific cases where only a subset of the raw data is exploited or in cases where changes in processing method are likely to occur after the project has ended. In these cases both raw and processed data should be archived at BODC. It must be stressed that BODC does not have the resource to process raw data without specific agreement. Unprocessed data cannot readily be incorporated into the relational database system and its distribution is limited to copies of the original files via a data set inventory. In the case of NERC funded research the submission of unprocessed data to a national data centre does not meet the data management criteria of the grant.