Data Delivery and Data Rights

The original contract between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and AUI states that

All scientific information which the Contractor deems to be of record value, prepared by, or otherwise under the control of, the Contractor, in connection with the performance of work hereunder, shall remain the property of the Government, but the Contractor shall have the right to use, disseminate and publish such information, subject to all the provisions of the Articles entitles “Security Requirements” and “Patents”.

Proposal data, proposal metadata, observational data, and observational metadata are defined as follows.

• Proposal data consist of material submitted by the PI (title, abstract, author information, scientific and technical justifications, source/resource information and related sessions) and a disposition letter, which contains scheduling priorities and review feedback.
• Proposal metadata consists of source positions, observation frequencies, and integration times.
• Observational data include visibility data and all resulting data products.
• Observational metadata include the positional and sky coverage information, frequency settings, frequency coverage and resolution, angular resolution, uv-coverage, antenna lists, source and calibrator names, polarization, observation date(s) and start/end times, time on source and sampling rate, weather information and PI name.

For projects with scheduling priorities of A, B, C, or D the name of the PI, proposal ID, title, hours awarded, proposal type, expiration date for Trigger proposals, and the aggregate time observed for Large proposals are made public immediately in the relevant observatory Science Program. This information plus the list of co-Is and the abstract is made available from the Proposal Finder Tool (PFT). The information submitted as part of proposals that are rejected or not observed will remain confidential. The scientific and technical justification, figures, references, and review rankings and reviews are never made public for any proposal.

While proposal source lists are not made public directly, proposal metadata are available publicly from the Archive Access Tool once the data for a proposal have been collected. Observational metadata will be made available without restrictions when an observation is archived. Additionally, Operator Logs are made available once the data have been collected at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/oplogs.cgi.

Both Observatory staff and external members of the scientific community participate in the Observatory proposal evaluation and time allocation process. They will regularly be exposed to confidential information and proprietary data and ideas. The information, data, and ideas must be held in confidence and not disclosed to others. However, several exceptions apply according to the role of the individuals in question.

• Members of a given Science Review Panel may disclose and discuss the contents of any proposal assigned to them with one another, consistent with the conflicts of interest policy.
• Members of the Time Allocation Committee may disclose and discuss the contents of any proposal under consideration with each other, consistent with conflicts of interest policy.
• Observatory staff serving as technical reviewers may need to consult with each other to ensure a fair and complete assessment of technical elements of the proposal. Hence, technical details may be disclosed and discussed internally by relevant Observatory staff as needed.
• Observatory staff members that participate in the Director’s Review may disclose and discuss the contents of any proposal under consideration with each other, consistent with the conflicts of interest policy.

The observational data are reserved for the exclusive use of the proposing team for a fixed period of time, after which they become publicly available. The proprietary period for Regular, Large, and Triggered proposals is normally a maximum of 12 months after the last observation. For proposals with student PIs or co-Is that have declared they are  “Observing For Thesis” and have submitted a Plan of Dissertation Research (Section 7.2), the proprietary period is 24 months. For data acquired by the VLBA, HSA, or GMVA, the nominal proprietary period begins when the correlated data are entered into the data archive by Observatory science operations.

At its discretion, the TAC may recommend a proprietary period that differs from the nominal 12 month period. For Large proposals, the proposing team is encouraged to make their data available to the public after a shorter proprietary period. The TAC recommendation regarding any change in the normal proprietary period is considered as part of the Director’s Review. If the recommendation is accepted, the proposers will be informed and the reason will be provided.

The proprietary period for data acquired by DDT proposals will normally be no more than 6 months and may be waived entirely; i.e., under certain circumstances, the data will be available to other teams or the public as soon as they are acquired. The proprietary period for data obtained by ToO proposals will be assessed on a case-by-case basis but will be no more than 6 months. An example where this option might be exercised is when the announcement of a transient event by one team triggers an active proposal of another team. The data would be made available to both teams immediately. The relevant Director’s office, in consultation with the NRAO Director or designee, will assign a proprietary period for the data based on scientific and programmatic considerations.

The Observatory staff will have access to observational data at all times as necessary for technical analysis and performance tuning. In addition, if a project qualifies to be run through the Science Ready Data Products (SRDP) pipeline, then Observatory staff can download and reduce project data for this purpose. Until the proprietary period expires, Observatory staff may not disclose or scientifically use the observational data from projects for which they are not a PI or co-I, including projects they support, without explicit recorded permission from the PI.

For the VLA and VLBA, the observational data is released to the PIs soon after the data are collected via the Archive Access Tool. Users must log-in to access their data. Qualified datasets are run through the SRDP pipeline and can be accessed through the Archive Access Tool as well. For the GBT, the observational data are immediately available.

Requests for extensions will be considered for extenuating circumstances outside the control of the PI. The most common circumstances where proprietary time extensions have been approved include parental/personal leave, sick leave, or military service. PIs may submit their request through the NRAO Science Helpdesk and justify that the approved leave takes significant time away from the office. Decisions on requests for an extension of the propriety period are made by the Assistant Director for Science Support and Research. The length of the extension will be considered on a case-by-case basis based on the conditions of the approved leave. For these cases, the extensions must be requested at least one month before the end of the proprietary period. An extension will not be granted if requested within 30 days before the data are scheduled to become public. Vacation, science, sabbatical leaves will not be considered for an extension. The proprietary period of Large proposals will not be extended in the cases of approved leave. The proprietary period may be extended without PI consultation if errors are found in the data by Observatory staff or extenuating circumstances occur (e.g., Archive Acess Tool is unavailable for a long period of time).

Standard calibration data are observations of calibrators needed to perform the correct calibration of the scientific data. They include the flux, bandpass, amplitude, phase and polarization observations taken during PI observations. This definition extends to data that are resultant from the Accurate Position Service (see Section 5.1).

All standard calibration data have no proprietary period even if they are the result of PI observations. However, there does not yet exist a mode independent of the Archive Access Tool to acquire calibration data that is associated with proprietary data. In the future, the Observatory may make such data accessible separately from the Archive Access Tool. If the Accurate Position Service (Section 5.1) is leveraged, the results will be public domain immediately and source positions, and in many cases, even images will appear on the geodetic web sites.

Data obtained during commissioning, engineering tests or science verification (SV) activities will be used to characterize and develop the facility systems, including hardware and software. The data will be released through the archive, technical memos, or publications.

Science Verification projects may not duplicate an approved PI or DDT proposal that is in the observing queue or during their proprietary period. If a PI proposal is approved that duplicates a SV observation planned after the proposal submission deadline, the corresponding SV project must be changed to avoid duplication. DDT proposals that duplicate a SV observation already planned and announced on the relevant observatory Science Program before the submission of the former will be rejected.