Global Ionospheric Radio Observatory

Lowell Digital Ionogram Data Base
Rules of the Road

The data acquired from the digisonde network for storage in the University of Massachusetts Lowell DIDBase may be used freely for educational and non-commercial academic research purposes by registered users only. Redistribution of the data is subject to the same conditions of use.

A heavy investment of time, effort, expertise, and funds continues to be made to produce, collect, quality control, interpret, and store digisonde ionograms. It is important that data suppliers and the UML DIDBase developers are appropriately acknowledged in scientific publications that involve analysis of data obtained from the Lowell DIDBase.

The following 'RULES OF THE ROAD' have been agreed upon to satisfy these needs and to clarify the responsibilities of users.

• To register for a read-only Lowell DIDBase account, send request to Prof. Bodo Reinisch, Bodo_Reinisch@uml.edu. A username and password will be issued for SAO Explorer connection to Lowell DIDBase. The read-only account can be shared within the organization applied for DIDBase access.
• In scientific publications that involve analysis of data obtained from the Lowell DIDBase:
• All data suppliers have to be listed and acknowledged
• The Lowell DIDBase project has to be referenced (see below) 
• Data users are strongly encouraged to contact designated persons at the data supplier organization prior to using the data to discuss the intended usage in the light of possible data issues. Contact persons for each digisonde are listed in the Digisonde Station List.
• Data obtained from the Database are to be shared only with other users who have an up-to-date Lowell DIDBase account.
• If the autoscaled records are edited in the process of analysis, we strongly encourage sharing of the edited data with the DIDBase community.
• Edited results can be sent (e-mail or FTP) to Lowell for ingestion to DIDBase. Contact Grigori Khmyrov for details.
• A Scaler Account can be assigned for frequent scaled data submissions. Registered scalers are granted a privilege of online, on-the-fly submission of edited results from SAO Explorer to DIDBase. Read-only connection to DIDB does not allow online submissions. For further instructions please apply to Prof. Bodo Reinisch.

Lowell DIDBase Reference:
Reinisch, B. W., I. A. Galkin, G. Khmyrov, A. Kozlov, and D. F. Kitrosser, Automated collection and dissemination of ionospheric data from the digisonde network, Adv. Radio Sci. (2004), 2: 241-247.