#  Introduction

##  Background and motivation

INTERACT research stations generate data as a result of long-term
environmental monitoring programmes and shorter term research projects.
Currently more than 75 research stations located throughout arctic and
northern alpine areas are part of the INTERACT network (Figure 1). Among the
scientific disciplines practiced in the network are climatology, geoscience,
biology, ecology, cryospheric science, and to some extent anthropology. These
activities can be organised by the station itself or by external scientists.
In addition, research stations often archive relevant data from external
sources (usually meteorological observations, photos, reports, maps). Such
heterogeneous data generating activities, combined with lacking structured
data management practices at the stations, result in data archived at multiple
locations for individual stations. Current INTERACT data repositories include
research stations’ archives, local archives (e.g. municipal authorities),
national archives (e.g. meteorological institutes), archives of international,
single discipline networks (e.g. CALM), EU repositories (e.g. SIOS Knowledge
Centre), pan-Arctic/regional repositories (e.g. SAON), and global repositories
(e.g. Pangaea, GTN-P). Far too often, research project data stays with the
research project leader and is not shared according to SAON/IASC, EU, OECD,
WMO and GEOSS recommendations. Furthermore, most stations lack the
interoperability interfaces necessary to actively engage in national and
international data exchange and management activities coordinated through
international programmes (e.g. EU, WMO, ICSU, GEO etc.). Also, no unified
interface for INTERACT datasets curretly exists that could help INTERACT
achieve a domain data repository role. The consequence is underutilisation of
existing and future monitoring capabilities, as well as INTERACT as a
contribution to the scientific toolbox. However, through the application of
accepted documentation and exchange standards, INTERACT can become a valuable
asset in network gap analysis performed in various communities (e.g. WMO
Observation Systems Capability Analysis and Review tool (OSCAR) surface
supporting GAW and GCW). The improvements to data management practices would
make INTERACT data **FAIR** : findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-
useable.

The data management work package of INTERACT aims to **increase the data
interoperability** among stations and towards external data consumers by
defining needs for generating **common standards** and data dissemination
strategies. The benefit of such a process is increased visibility and
potentially impact for INTERACT stations.

The purpose of the data management plan is to describe the basic principles
how the data generated by the project is handled during and after the project.
This includes standards and generation of discovery and use metadata, data
sharing and preservation and life cycle management; i.e. by following the
principles outlined by the  _Open Research Data Pilot_ and  _The FAIR Guiding
Principles for scientific data management and_ _stewardship_ (Wilkinson et al.
2016). However, INTERACT is a heterogeneous community and full implementation
of data management at stations is not in the budget. Thus the primary
objectives of this Data Management Plan is to initiate a process that at some
time will lead to a unified view of the INTERACT data. This is achieved
through dialogue with station managers, description of best practises and
linking stations and data centres where stations do not want to manage data
themselves.

This document is a **living document** that will be updated during the
project.

_**1.2.Organisation of the plan** _

This plan is based on the  _template_ provided by the UK Digital Curation
Centre (DMP Online). This approach is recommended by  _OpenAIRE_ _guidelines_
.

#  Admin details  
  
<table>  
<tr>  
<th>

**Project Name**

</th>  
<th>

INTERACT

</th> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**Funding**

</td>  
<td>

EU HORIZON 2020 Research and Innovation Programme

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

**Partners**

</td>  
<td>

  * Lund University (LU) SE 

  

  * University of Sheffield (USFD) UK 

  

  * University of Copenhagen (UCPH) DK 

  

  * University of Oulu (UOULU) FI 

  

  * Aarhus University (AU) DK 

  

  * CLU srl (CLU) IT 

  

  * Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) DE 

  

  * Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) NO 

  

  * Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UK 

  

  * Tomsk State University (TSU) RU 

  

  * University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice (USB) CZ 

  

  * Swedish Polar Research Secretariat (SPRS) SE 

  

  * Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environ. Research (NIBIO) NO 

  

  * Stockholm University (SU) SE  University of Helsinki (UH) FI 

  

  * Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR) GL 

  

  * Polish Academy of Sciences - Geophysics dept. IGF-PAS PL 

  

  * University of Turku (UTU) FI 

  

  * University of Oslo (UiO) NO 

  

  * Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE) FI 

  

  * Russian Academy of Sciences - Siberian Branch (IBPC) RU 

  

  * M V Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) RU  Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) SE 

  

  * Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) AT 

  

  * University of Innsbruck (LFU) AT 

  

  * Yugra State University (YSU) RU 

  

  * Faroe Islands Nature Investigation (JF) FO 

  

  * Northeast Iceland Nature Center (RFS) IS 

  

  * Centre for Northern Studies (CEN) CA 

  

  * Polish Academy of Sciences - Geography Dept. (IGSO-PAS) PL 

  

  * Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) IT 

  

  * University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) US 

  

  * Sudurnes Science and Learning Center (SSLC) IS 

  

  * Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) FI 

  

  * CAFF International Secretariat (CAFF) IS 

  

  * APECS - University of Tromsoe (UiT) NO 

  

  * Aurora College - The Western Arctic Research Centre (AC) CA 

  

  * Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) CA 

  

  * Umbilical Design (UD-AB) SE 

  

  * ÅF Technology AB (AF) SE 

  

  * Norwegian Meteorological Institute (METNO) NO 

  

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI) IS

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

University of Groningen (UoG-AC) NL

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

International Polar Foundation (IPF) BE

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

Mapillary (MAP) SE

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) NO

</td> </tr>  
<tr>  
<td>

</td>  
<td>



</td>  
<td>

The International Centre for Reindeer Husbandry (ICR) NO

</td> </tr> </table>

#  Data summary

The INTERACT Data Management Plan addresses data describing >75 research
stations (Figure 1) in cold regions of the Northern Hemisphere. A listing of
the stations involved is provided in the proposal Section 4 and on the
projects website (  _http://www.eu-interact.org_ )  . These stations obtain
baseline- and monitoring data on a multitude of scientific disciplines
practiced within the network. Through the integration of the independent
research stations’ data through a unified approach, a comprehensive
coordinated view on the Arctic is achieved. Multitudes of stakeholders,
scientists, modellers, government agencies, educators, and to some extent
private citizens have a vested interest in accessing the various kinds of data
collected at the stations that can provide historical records, serve in model
validation, and provide critical indicators across the disciplines covered
within the network.

The main objective of INTERACT is **to build capacity for identifying,
understanding, predicting and responding to diverse environmental changes
throughout the wide environmental and land-use envelopes of the Arctic** .

A prerequisite to achieve this is to coordinate the data collected at INTERACT
stations and to make them available. Thus, INTERACT data management aims to
integrate datasets in a unified system, simplifying discovery, access and
utilisation of data for various stakeholders in the scientific community, as
well as in operational communities (e.g. scientists, national and local
decision makers, etc.).

INTERACT is truly interdisciplinary. With this perspective and as this
activity on coordinated data management has just begun, no full overview of
data types exist.

Concerning the encoding of data, self-explaining file formats (e.g. NetCDF,
HDF/HDF5) combined with semantic and structural standards like the Climate and
Forecast Convention are required to ensure interoperability at the data level.
Implementation of this is however a time consuming process and will be done
gradually.

Eventually, data can be integrated from different data centres with this
approach.

The default format for INTERACT datasets is NetCDF following the Climate and
Forecast Convention (feature types grid, timeseries, profiles and trajectories
if applicable). However, not all data handled at INTERACT stations are covered
by the Climate and Forecast Convention for standard names. INTERACT is
currently in a process of analysing the data collected and potential ways for
handling these data. This work must be based on external activities within the
disciplines and in Arctic data management in general.

INTERACT has a huge legacy of data. Within this phase of INTERACT, an effort
to identify legacy datasets and plan future handling of these will be
initiated.

Data are generated by permanent instrumentation (monitoring) and field work
(projects) at the INTERACT research stations.

The total amount of data is yet not known in detail currently. As the project
progress, better understanding of the full capacity of INTERACT will be
achieved.

_Figure 1: More than 75 research stations are participating in INTERACT_

INTERACT data are useful for all users of INTERACT research stations, as well
as projects, programmes and individual scientists undertaking scientific or
monitoring work in the Arctic. Establishing a unified view on the data
produced by INTERACT stations will improve the impact of INTERACT and the
individual stations through promotion of the their capacity for various data
consumers, ranging from individual scientists to regional or global monitoring
programmes (e.g.  _AMAP_ ,  _GCW_ and  _GAW_ )  .

##  Making data findable, provisions for metadata [FAIR data]

Improving the ability of internal and external data consumers to find and
understand the data INTERACT stations are producing is essential to increase
the impact of INTERACT, individual stations and researchers. Through exposure
of the data produced by INTERACT in relevant discipline specific, regional and
global catalogues, the knowledge and interest in INTERACT is increased. This
can be done both individually by each station or by the INTERACT community.

INTERACT is following a metadata driven approach. This means that by utilizing
internationally accepted standards and protocols for documentation and
exchange of discovery and use metadata, interoperability with international
systems and frameworks, including WMO’s systems,  _Year of Polar Prediction_
(YOPP),  _WMO Global Cryosphere Watch_ (GCW) and many national and
international Arctic and marine data centers (e.g.  _Svalbard Integrated
Arctic Earth Observing System_ )  is ensured.

INTERACT data management is distributed in nature, relying on a number of data
centres with a long term mandate. This ensures preservation of the scientific
legacy. While defining the approach of INTERACT data management, INTERACT is
aligning efforts with  _SAON/IASC Arctic Data_ _Committee_ .  This implies
documenting all datasets with standardised discovery metadata using either the
_Global Change Master_ _Directory_ _Directory Interchange Format_ or
_ISO19115_ standards.

INTERACT promotes and encourages the implementation of globally resolvable
Persistent Identifiers (e.g. Digital Object Identifiers - DOI) at each
contributing data centre. Some have this in place, while others are in the
process of establishing this. If DOIs are not supported, a local persistent
identifier must be supported.

Concerning naming conventions, INTERACT requires that controlled vocabularies
are used both at the discovery level and the data level to describe the
content. Discovery level metadata must identify the convention used and the
convention has to be available in machine readable form (preferably through
Simple Knowledge Organisation System). The fallback solution for controlled
vocabularies is the  _Global Change_ _Master Directory vocabularies_ .

The search model of the data management system is based on  _GCMD Science
Keywords_ for parameter identification through discovery metadata.

Versioning of data is required for the data published in the data management
system. Details on requirements for how to define a new version of a dataset
is to be agreed upon by the Data Forum.

The central node can consume and expose discovery metadata as GCMD DIF and
ISO19115 records (using GCMD keywords for physical/dynamical parameters).
Support for more formats is considered. For use metadata the Climate and
Forecast convention is promoted. More specifications will be identified early
in the project.

##  Making data openly accessible [FAIR data]

Being able to find relevant data is only the first step. Most data consumers
are interested in the actual data. The requirements of data consumers vary.
While ad hoc consumers (usually scientists) frequently consume whatever is
found from a network of stations, consumers concerned with monitoring, or
calibration and validation of numerical models, or remote sensing products
will usually require harmonisation of the data to a common form before they
invest in integration. In order to address this standardisation of file
formats (encoding) and data access mechanisms is required.

The discovery metadata that can be collected will be made available through a
web based search interface at  _https://interact.met.no_ .  Some data may have
temporal access restrictions (embargo period). An embargo period on data may
be requested for different reasons, e.g. allowing Ph.D. students to prepare
their work, or while data is used in the preparation of a publication. Even if
data are constrained in the embargo period, data will be shared internally in
the project. Any disagreements on access to data or misuse of data internally
are to be settled by the INTERACT Steering Board.

A central data repository supporting the demonstrator will be made available.
Within this demonstrator, data are made accessible using interoperability
protocols using a THREDDS Data Server. This will support OpeNDAP, OGC Web Map
Service for visualisation of gridded datasets, and direct HTTP download of
full

files. Standardisation of data access interfaces and linkage to the Common
Data Model through OPeNDAP  1  is promoted for all data centres contributing
to INTERACT. This enables direct access of data within analysis tools like
Matlab, Excel  2  and R. The purpose of this demonstrator is to show how data
may be shared in standard manner using Open Source Software. Most of the
INTERACT data will however be managed by the stations or data centres the
stations make agreements with. The purpose of the demonstrator is to increase
the knowledge among stations on metadata and data interoperability and to
encourage stations not sharing data today to start exploring possibilities.

Metadata and data for the datasets are maintained by the stations and
responsible data centres, metadata supporting unified search is harvested and
ingested in the demonstrator hosted by central node.

##  Making data interoperable [FAIR data]

Interoperability at the data level will be facilitated by following best
practises within international data management and relevant standardisation
efforts. This includes application of self explaining file formats utilising
discipline specific controlled vocabularies for data annotation. Data will be
made available through  _OPeNDAP_ with use metadata following the  _Climate
and Forecast conventions_ e.g. for geophysical data.

However, exceptions will occur due to the diversity of INTERACT data. Some of
the disciplines covered by INTERACT, e.g. meteorology, are advanced in the
context of use metadata, while others are lacking a unified, discipline
specific approach. INTERACT must rely on discipline specific activities and
larger network activities (e.g. GTN-P, GAW, GCW) to avoid duplication of
efforts and reuse the solutions developed. In order to address this aspect,
the Data Forum is established to promote the understanding of emerging data
management requirements. Implementation within INTERACT will be a long and
stepwise process.

Initially  _GCMD Science keywords_ will be used, mapping between GCMD Science
keywords and  _CF_ _standard names_ is supported (but needs to be updated).
Other vocabularies are included (e.g.  _GBIF_ )  as they are available and
considered mature. In the current situation, interaction with the stations is
needed to fully get an overview of the relevant standards and controlled
vocabularies.

##  Increase data re-use (through clarifying licenses) [FAIR data]

The INTERACT data policy is not written yet, but INTERACT promotes free and
open data sharing in line with the  _Open Research Data Pilot_ .  Each dataset
requires a license attached. The recommendation in

INTERACT is to use  _Creative Commons_ _attribution license_ for data (see
_https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/_ for details). However, INTERACT
is spanning many nations and a more careful examination of the business models
for various stations and funding regimes is required.

INTERACT data should be delivered in a timely manner, meaning without undue
delay. Any delay, due or undue, shall not be longer than one year after the
dataset is finished. Discovery metadata shall be delivered immediately.

INTERACT is promoting free and open access to data. Some data may have access
constraints. Details will be evaluated during the project.

The quality of each dataset is the responsibility of the Principal
Investigator. The Data Management System will ensure that information on the
quality of the data is available in the discovery metadata.

INTERACT is primarily concerned with observational data. These data cannot be
reproduced and must be reusable in the undefined future.

#  Allocation of resources

In the current situation it is not possible to estimate the cost for making
INTERACT data FAIR. Part of the reason is that this work is relying on
existing functionality at the contributing data centres and that this
functionality has been developed over years. The project is also still in the
process of establishing an overview of the current situation among the 79
research stations involved.

Within the first period of INTERACT, a questionnaire has been filed to
stations asking for details on existing data management. This is still being
analysed, but preliminary results indicate challenges establishing a
preliminary data management system as a demonstrator for INTERACT. Over 50 %
of the stations surveyed indicated established data management routines. Thus,
instead of starting with stations, INTERACT will start with selected data
centres that host data for INTERACT stations. Most of these data centres are
active in relevant data management activities.

The following data centres are so far identified:

**Page**

Not all contact points identified above are directly involved in INTERACT, but
their institutions are and the data centres are handling INTERACT data. For
some archives, contact points are to be identified. This table will be further
developed and is only to be considered as a preliminary version.

  4. Will be available August 2017. 

  

  5. _Data available through Polar Data Catalogoue which has interoper_ ability interfaces for metadata. 

  

  

**Page**

Once INTERACT data management is fully established, each data centre is
responsible for accepting, managing, sharing and preserving relevant datasets.
Concerning interoperability interfaces the following interfaces are required
for the first version of the system:

1\. Metadata

  1. _OAI-PMH_ serving either  _CCMD DIF_ or the  _ISO19115_ minimum profile with  _GCMD Science_ _Keywords_ . 

  

  2. Data (will also use whatever is available and deliver this in original form, for those data no synthesis products are possible without an extensive effort) 1. OGC WMS (actual visual representation, not data) 

  

  

2\.  _OPeNDAP_ for data streaming/download, including format conversion

However, it should be understood that this is a best effort basis to show the
benefit for the INTERACT community, at least initially. Thus, the activities
are aligned with the efforts of the  _SAON/IASC Arctic Data_ _Committee_ .

In the current situation there is no overview of the costs of long term
preservation of data as this is the responsibility of the contributing data
centres and the business model for these differs. This information will be
updated.

#  Data security

Data security relies on the existing mechanisms of the contributing data
centres. INTERACT recommends to ensure the communication between data centres
and users with secure HTTP. Concerning the internal security of the data
centre, INTERACT recommends the best practises from  _OAIS_ .

The central node relies on secure HTTP, but not all contributing data centres
support this yet. As this effort is for demonstration initially, this section
will be addressed following discussions in the Data Forum.

#  Ethical aspects

INTERACT is handling a wide variety of data. Some data may be ethically
sensitive. In the  _IASC context_ this is especially related to humans and
resources (e.g. fisheries, birds and mammals). As the INTERACT Data Policy
still is under development, this will be addressed in later versions of the
document.

#  Other

This is not applicable in the current situation, but other considerations
(e.g. funder, institutional, departmental or group policies on data
management, data sharing and data security) may become applicable in later
versions of the plan.

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