Repository criteria

The precondition to submit a manuscript for publication in Earth System Science Data (ESSD) and its scientific discussion forum Earth System Science Data Discussions (ESSDD) is that the data sets referenced in the manuscript are submitted to a long-term repository.

The following basic criteria have to be fulfilled under all circumstances:

• Persistent identifier: the data sets must have a digital object identifier (DOI).
• Open access: the data sets have to be available free of charge and without any barriers.
• Liberal copyright: anyone must be free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the data sets as long as they give credit to the original authors (equivalent to the Creative Commons Attribution License).
• Long-term availability: the repository has to meet the highest standards to guarantee long-term availability of the data sets and permanent access.

Data centres supporting the ESSD criteria

Authors are asked to check whether their data centre fulfils the criteria above. The topic editors will carefully consider – for each article submitted – whether the data repository can be considered qualified. If they come to a negative conclusion, they will discuss this issue with the author before publishing the manuscript as a discussion paper in ESSDD.

To give some examples we have listed those data centres alphabetically that have already been used for published ESSD articles. Please note that the purpose of this list is to offer examples; it does not depict a complete list:

• BODC (British Oceanographic Data Centre);
• HOAPS (Hamburg Ocean Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data);
• NORPERM (Norwegian Permafrost Database);
• PANGAEA (Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science);
• 4TU.ResearchData (initiative of the four Dutch technical universities Delft, Eindhoven, Wageningen, and Twente)
• ZALF Open Research Data (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research).