Later in Your Project

Once you have generated your data, you must submit it to BODC within six months of the date your data were collected. Data should be in a final format with basic quality control procedures applied where appropriate. Please refer to our detailed data submission guidelines for further information.

Submitting your data to us as early as possible allows us to adequately perform the data management duties that have been agreed during the data management planning stage of your project, including publishing DOIs.

A data submission does not mean that your data will become immediately accessible to the public. BODC are able to apply embargo periods to your data to ensure they are kept private. Under the NERC data policy, a two year embargo beginning from the date the data were collected is the standard. We are also able to waive the embargo period if you wish. Submitting your data to BODC ensures that it is kept safe in a read-only archive for long term storage.

All data need to be accompanied with adequate metadata. Please fill in our metadata submission template for all datasets that you submit to BODC. You should also provide a comprehensive abstract for each dataset that describes the data.

Data submitted to BODC will be made discoverable via a European Directory of Marine Environmental Data (EDMED) record. Depending on the data and what has been agreed during the data management planning stage of your project, your data can then be ingested into our National Oceanographic Database (NODB) and published through our Published Data Library (PDL).

If you are unsure what datasets you need to submit to BODC, please refer to your data management plan, or contact your BODC project manager for help. If you do not have a designated project manager, then please contact our BODC Enquiries officer.