Lowell GIRO Data Center (LGDC) RULES OF THE ROAD

Release date: September 11, 2013

Last updated: May 5, 2014

Preamble

Heavy investments of time, effort, expertise, and funds continue to be made to produce, collect, quality control, interpret, and archive ionosonde data. It is therefore important that the data providers and LGDC are appropriately acknowledged in scientific publications that include analysis of data obtained from LGDC servers.  

Roles and Responsibilities

1. Lowell GIRO Data Center (LGDC) is a Data Sharing Infrastructure. Data providers contribute the ionogram and drift data to LGDC and in return gain free access to data from all the other GIRO participants.
2. LGDC data records are owned by the original data providers (i.e., observatories that operate the instruments).
3. On behalf of the data owners, LGDC takes responsibility for
   • Quality control of submitted records,
   • Cataloging data for queries,
   • Data safeguarding and long-term preservation,
   • Promotion of data to other users,
   • Monitoring of secondary data usage,
   • Enforcement of data acknowledgements, and
   • Persistent identification for consistent data citation.
4. To facilitate convenient access and use of LGDC data collections, LDGC takes responsibility for
   • Software development for online exploration and processing of DIDBase and DriftBase records,
   • Software development for derivation of secondary data products and displays like ARTIST, DDA, DirectogramMaker, Skymap, Tilt, etc.,
   • Data model and format development for standardized access,
   • Development and installation of LGDC mirror servers, and
   • Management and optimization of databases and web portals.

LGDC Account

To register for read-only Lowell DIDBase or DriftBase accounts, send request to Prof. Bodo Reinisch, Bodo_Reinisch@uml.edu.

A username and password will be issued by the LGDC Account Maintenance team for SAO Explorer connection to Lowell DIDBase and Drift Explorer connection to Lowell DriftBase. The read-only account can be shared within the organization that applied for access.

Rules of the Road

1. Free online access to acquired data is arranged only for educational and non-commercial research purposes.
2. 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.
3. Should a scientific publication evolve from the conducted analysis of data from LGDC or its mirror servers, the authors are requested to:
   • Offer the data owners or observatory directors  the option of co-authorship.
   • Include citation of the GIRO project publication:

   Reinisch, B. W., and I. A. Galkin, Global ionospheric radio observatory (GIRO), Earth, Planets, and Space, 63, 377-381,  doi:10.5047/eps.2011.03.001, 2011.

   • Include the following persistent citations of the GIRO data resources in the paper's Acknowledgements section:

   For GIRO: http://spase.info/SMWG/Observatory/GIRO

   If you use raw ionogram data: http://spase.info/VWO/DisplayData/GIRO/GRM.PT15M

   If you use ionogram-derived characteristics such as foF2: http://spase.info/VWO/NumericalData/GIRO/CHARS.PT15M

   If you use skymaps/drift velocities: http://spase.info/VWO/DisplayData/GIRO/SKYMAP.PT15M

4. Data obtained from the LGDC are to be shared only with users who have an up-to-date LGDC account.
5. If 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 via e-mail or FTP to Lowell for ingestion to DIDBase. Contact Ivan Galkin for details (ivan_galkin@uml.edu).
   • A “Scaler Account” can be assigned for frequent scaled data submissions. Registered scalers are granted the privilege of online, on-the-fly submission of edited results from SAO Explorer to DIDBase. These edited results will be archived under your name, and will not replace the original autoscaled results or the results from other scalers. Read-only connection to DIDBase does not allow online submissions. For further instructions please apply to Prof. Bodo Reinisch.