Data and Analysis Tool Sharing Guidelines
The Avian Knowledge Network (AKN) is comprised of people, data, and technology working together to improve bird conservation, management, and research across organizational boundaries and spatial scales. The sharing of data is the core function of the Avian Knowledge Network partnership. The AKN continues to develop and refine procedures and tools that facilitate data sharing, including tools for metadata documentation and data entry, upload, verification, summary, backup, discovery, and download.
Contributing data to AKN improves data use and longevity by preserving datasets and their metadata and increasing access to and use of data. This document outlines AKN policies and terms for data sharing.
The AKN acknowledges that ecological data are highly valuable and must be properly preserved for the purposes originally intended, but also for other purposes that were not necessarily anticipated by the data collector. A guiding principle of this policy is that the investments in time, money, and intellect that are committed to collection and curation of a dataset entitle a “Data Owner” to the fundamental benefits of the work. This policy recognizes the Data Owner(s) as the investigator(s) and institution(s) responsible for data collection and compilation. The AKN is committed to ensuring that data sharing and access are done openly and collaboratively, with the provision that Data Owner(s) ultimately have the discretion to approve or disapprove use of their data.
DATA SHARING
It is the intention of the AKN that data be shared whenever possible, while carefully considering the tradeoffs between widespread distribution of datasets, the need to ensure data quality and validity, the privacy rights of land owners, and the intentions of the Data Owner(s). AKN therefore offers the following data access levels and sharing options that specify which level of access is granted by Data Owners:
RESTRICTED data have been fully reviewed, however the observations are not shared at all. Note that AKN projects always share project names, descriptions, and contact information. No detailed metadata, data summaries, nor observation information are shared outside of the project.
METADATA ONLY level shares the project description and contact, survey locations, survey methods, and the species surveyed.
SUMMARIZE ONLY level inherits all METADATA ONLY rules, plus allows use of data as part of publically available visualizations and summaries without survey effort and specific count details.
SHARE WITH PERMISSION level inherits all SUMMARIZE ONLY rules, plus allow use of full observation data and metadata detail to anyone that has a data sharing agreement with the data owner.
SHARE OPENLY level allows full observation data and metadata detail to anyone for use without the need for explicit permission from the data owner.
The AKN encourages its partners to anticipate that most data collected will eventually become part of the public domain. We encourage Data Owners to share data 10 years old or older without restrictions (Level 5). However, the AKN ensures that their data and tools are secure and that access is controlled based on Data Owner intent.
METADATA
Metadata are a critical component of data preservation. Metadata provide complete documentation of methods, location, and effort used in collecting the data. Metadata also document specific definitions for data fields and dictionaries for each field’s domain. Data sharing levels are also documented as part of a dataset’s metadata. Metadata are needed to ensure the data can be properly understood and their quality and potential usefulness assessed. Data for which there are no associated metadata have limited utility.
DATA USE AND TERMS
The AKN encourages and facilitates the ethical and courteous use of data among collaborators. All cooperators who contribute to and/or access data from the Avian Knowledge Network are required to agree to these data sharing terms and policies.
The use of data, and the publication of results derived directly from those data, are the primary responsibility and privilege of the Data Owner. This privilege is extended to third parties as a contribution by the Data Owner. Data Owners should always be acknowledged in publications and reports.
Requests for the use of data should be made in writing (via letter or email). The written request should have clearly defined objectives, and should explicitly spell out the terms, conditions, and parameters of the data requested and how they will be used. Data Owners may set individual terms and conditions for allowable use of their data (e.g., acknowledgement, co‐authorship in publications) that may be specified in a Data Sharing Agreement. A suggested general guideline is that, when 20% or more of the data for a publication or report come from one Data Owner, that Owner should be given the opportunity for authorship on the publication or report.
Avian Knowledge Network reserves the right to modify, revise, or supplement this policy, as it deems appropriate. Document developed by L. Salas, J. Alexander, G. Ballard, and C.J. Ralph.