Is there a charge to archive data?
Archiving data is a time consuming process which extends decades into the future. The costs involved cover both staff time to deposit the data on the archive initially as well as ongoing infrastructure and maintenance costs to store and backup the data in the long-term (typically at least a ten year period).
CEDA has ongoing agreements with a number of research councils and third-party organisations to archive and curate data resulting from projects that they fund. For example, CEDA has overarching agreements in place to archive data from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), and National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) as well as data from selected European Space Agency (ESA) and Met Office projects; data resulting from these projects can therefore be archived without any additional charge to data producers.
Where data results from a project that does not fall under these existing agreements, additional funding may be required for data archival. Please contact the CEDA data management helpdesk (data.management@ceda.ac.uk) with estimates of the following information so that we can determine our costs.
- Number of datasets (determines how many catalogue pages are required)
- Dataset size (MB, GB, TB)
- Number of files (fewer, larger files are better than many small files)
- Frequency of data delivery (one-off deposit or ongoing delivery?)
- Associated project / funding body
If the cost to us is small and aligned with the NERC research we may waive the charges.