Data Policy Review - 2024

[sjurl]

Points from work with Data Preservation Plan:

• It's not explicit that the data owner retains ownership of the data (it's implied but it could be stated more clearly)
• There's no mention if there is the right to withdraw/delete data after it has been provided

https://github.com/ices-eg/DIG/issues/34

NH response:

• Agree
• this is trickier as this might conflict in certain cases with the technical guideline (below). So needs some thought on how to phrase that. ICES (2016): Technical Guidelines - Criteria for the use of data in ICES advisory work. ICES Technical Guidelines. Report. https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.advice.8346

[neil-ices-dk]

Industry data

Through various initiatives at the institutional, national and regional level, we are seeing an increasing engagement with industry to either collect data according to scientific methods, and/or make data available from their activities that could be re-used in ICES work areas. This is a positive development, and a win-win for both industry and the scientific process. There are challenges to dealing with industry and their data, and a number of ICES workshops have already considered different aspects of this WKSTIMP (2023), WKENSURE (2023), WGQUALITY (2022), WKDSG (2020) and WKSCINDI (2019). In general, data owned by industry/private enterprise are increasingly challenging the 'open' scientific process and the governance is growing in complexity and is difficult to enact.

There are challenges that are emerging from this engagement that we are yet to address – for example when industry has resource to prepare and submit data is usually at a time when the data are still under embargo and cannot be released. Although this is common practice in publishing, there has been a movement away from this in data provision – ICES removed the ability to embargo data in the 2006 revision of the ICES data policy. Likewise, as industry is the owner of data – they can reserve the right to make additional conditions over and above any formal agreements i.e. provision under the EU Data Collection Framework which we have no current framework to address.

This is a difficult question, and the solution will have some trade-offs for ICES in terms of resource or data availability that will need to be carefully weighed. DIG has taken up the discussion building on outcomes of the workshops, and also ‘real’ world scenarios that are now coming through from the expert groups. In time, this will result in a clearer set of recommendation that SCICOM and ACOM will need to consider.

[davidcurrie2001]

During the 2024 DIG meeting the ICES Data Policy was reviewed by a sub-group. To resolve the question of ownership it was suggested to add the following clear statement to the “Contribution of Data” section: “Data ownership does not transfer to ICES.”

The sub-group recommended that text explaining the limited right to deletion or withdrawal of data is not added to the Policy because even a mention of “deletion” may encourage these requests which would be to the detriment of ICES.

During the review of the Data Policy it was also noted that the definitions of “Data Provider” and “Data Owner” were not very clear:

• Data provider means the organization and/or individual that control/organizes the ownership access for the data
• Data owner means the organization and/or individual that retains the ownership rights for the data

It was also noted that in the Best Practices For Data Management Handbook (https://doi.org/10.17895/ices.pub.25435903.v1) the term “Data Provider” is not used, instead the following roles are defined:

• Custodian: the person or organization that maintains and ensures access to the data.
• Originator: the person or organization that acquired the data. Custodians and origi-nators are often the same, but not always.
• Publisher: the person or organization that publishes the data.
• Distributor: the person or organisation that distributes the data.
• Owner: The person or organization that owns the data.

There is also an ICES Code List which has some similar definitions: https://vocab.ices.dk/?codetypeguid=82ad7124-5482-4319-8870-bc97293dafca

• Custodian: The person or organization that maintains and ensures access to the data
• Originator: The person or organization that acquired the data. Custodians and origi-nators (sic)
• Owner: The person or organization that owns the data

We should align the roles that are used in the Policy, the Handbook, and the code list, and improve the definitions.

[neil-ices-dk]

@davidcurrie2001 we should work with the sub-group and put a deadline in for the DIG catch-up meeting