Early in Your Project

As the designated NERC Data Centre for oceanographic measurements, BODC provides support in all aspects of data management to anyone involved in NERC grant-funded research.

At no extra cost, BODC provide:

• Secure long-term storage of data
• Long-term re-usability of the data
• Web-based data discovery and online data download
• Licence and embargo management
• Data citation referencing, including DOI publication
• Management of data requests, Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations obligations for your grant

In accordance with the NERC Data Policy, Grant holders must complete a data management plan with BODC within the first three to six months of the grant beginning. The data management plan should cover a brief overview of data generation activities and expected data outputs, including their size, format, embargo information, and submission date. This information is required for all expected outputs, regardless of whether the grant holder expects to submit the data to BODC or another data repository.

If BODC finds that some of the data generated is better suited for long term storage elsewhere, then the designated BODC project manager will recommend a suitable NERC approved alternative repository.

Completing a data management plan enables BODC to accurately cost projects to ensure that we are able to cover all data management activities such as full ingestion of data into our database, creating discovery metadata records, and publishing data in DOIs.

Each NERC project will have a designated BODC project manager who will contact the grant holder to begin drafting a data management plan. If you have any questions, or do not have a designated project manager, please contact the BODC Enquiries officer.

For non-NERC projects, BODC can provide a quote for data management activities. Please see the project proposal page for more details.