Rules Governing Access and Use of the Cluster/Ground-Based Database

Preamble: Certain projects operate under a set of rules (e.g. the CDAW, DE and ISEE Rules of the Road) which identify obligations of investigators and researchers with regard to data provided by other investigators. Because the activities of and principal publications by members of the Cluster/Ground-Based (CLGB) Coordination are, by design, collaborative efforts which greatly exploit interchange of data within the research community, the following rules are adopted. [If a conflict is identified between these rules and the rules governing a data set provided to the Cluster/Ground-based data center the project rule is adopted and an amended copy of the CLGB rules will be forwarded to each member of the CLGB coordination project.]

1. Access to the CLGB database will be granted to established, participating members of the CLGB Coordination. Members who withdraw from participation in the project are obligated to continue to respect the rules established here.

   CLGB members are those scientists belonging to institution-specific research teams providing data to the CLGB database, and/or belonging to modeling/theory teams whose participation is invited by the CLGB Working Group. CLGB members are also those other individuals who, through attendance at regularly scheduled workshops, make significant contributions to organizing, reformatting, and interpreting data in the database.

2. Members of the CLGB Coordination may share data with members of their research team, but are not entitled to further distribute data provided by other investigators. The CLGB member is responsible to CLGB for ensuring that these rules are followed by members of his/her research team.

3. The CLGB database is established primarily for identification of suitable correlative studies by members of the CLGB. Access to the database and support software provides individual members of CLGB the means of correlating the summary data sets for the purpose of event identification. Preparation of summary data sets is the responsibility of the investigator who supplies the data, and is not to be undertaken by other members of the CLGB, unless agreed upon by the principal investigator in question.

4. If an investigator's summary data can be used in the more detailed analysis of an event, the investigator responsible for providing these data should be kept informed of what it is being used for, and should be given the opportunity to update the preliminary dataset with more refined data. He should be invited at an early and appropriate time to participate in the correlative analysis, and must be invited to participate as a co-author of any resulting publication or presentation, including abstracts. All co-authors of a research paper or abstract must be given a reasonable opportunity to review that work prior to submission for publication. If an investigator chooses to decline co-authorship after reviewing the work, that investigator is still encouraged to provide a critical review of the principal author if a disagreement exists concerning the interpretation of that investigator's data.

5. If an investigator declines co-authorship of a paper, an acknowledgement of that investigator's participation shall be provided. Authors are also requested to give acknowledgement to the joint efforts of the CLGB working group and the WDC at RAL, as this will help in in making these efforts more visible to the research community and supporting agencies, and may assist in establishing and enhancing future joint activities. A short, standard wording of an acknowledgementa will be offered as a suggestion.

6. New CLGB members will be welcome at any time, and in particular after the first major (series of) publications of CLGB results. These new members will abide by these rules of the road. Access of the database according to these rules of the road will be granted until, in the first instance, December 1999. Extension of this period would be desirable and will be discussed by CLGB members in the light of gained experience. (After this period the database may be opened without restrictions, however, individual investigators will be given the opportunity to withdraw their data from the CLGB database prior to a public release.)

7. Access to this database will be restricted by computer name to a list of institutes, approved by the CLGB working group. A logg of all retrievals of a subset of the database will be sent to the relevant data provider.

8. Submission of data to RAL for CLGB Coordination by an investigator does not constitute submission of data to the CLGB as part of any contractual obligation.

9. Unless declared otherwise, the summary data in the CLGB database at RAL are provided to identify scientifically interesting periods. They are designed to support data analysis efforts only, and are not to be used for any other purpose without the specific authorization of the appropriate Principal Investigators. Any of the summary datasets can contain unverified data.