Scientific Data Policy

Having studied the practice of research infrastructures BNC has established its own scientific data policy.

I. Ambit

  1. The Scientific Data Policy is part of the terms of use of the Budapest Neutron Centre (BNC).
  2. It applies to all experiments for which time has been allocated through the BNC User Office. It does not apply to proprietary research.

II. Principal investigators

  1. Each experiment has a Principal Investigator (PI), the corresponding author of the proposal. The PI is responsible for the experiment, for the experimental team ("user") and the experimental data.
  2. The PI must keep his/her contact information in the BNC User Office database up to date until the analysis of the experiment is completed, or must nominate a successor. If a PI cannot be reached, the BNC User Office may appoint a new PI.

III. Data privacy and integrity

  1. As a BNC user, you are given access to an open computing infrastructure, which is part of the infrastructure of the Centre for Energy Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Do not abuse this trust. Do not exploit security holes. Do not access, exploit or distribute experimental data unless you are entitled to do so. Respect the privacy of others.
  2. As an experimenter, you must fully cooperate in the acquisition of metadata which are meaningful and as complete as possible. The hand-written or electronic experiment logs must be kept according to the standards defined by the instrument responsible. Providing wrong or meaningless metadata is a violation of professional standards.
  3. Infringement of the above will lead to the suspension of user accounts and denial of future beamtime requests.

IV. Data preservation

  1. The PI is responsible for the preservation and transfer of experiment logs, metadata, raw data, results of data analysis and software used for data analysis, in accordance with professional standards and with the legal and contractual rules under which he is working.
  2. BNC has the right to preserve experiment logs, metadata, raw data, and reduced data that have been generated on BNC systems. BNC intends to preserve the data for at least five years, except for certain high data rate instruments (e. g. imaging), however, BNC cannot be made liable for accidental loss or unavailability of the data.

V. Data access

  1. The PI has the right to distribute the experimental data.
  2. BNC’s expert staff (e.g. instrument scientists, computing group members) have unrestricted access to the experimental data for internal purposes.

VI. Publications

  1. If an experiment results in a publication, the PI must deposit a reference in the BNC User Office publication data base when the reference becomes available, but within maximum three months afterwards.
  2. After publication of the results, the PI should grant public access to the experimental data.
  3. In the foreseeable future, within its system being developed, BNC will provide Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) for all experimental data before the experiment. Once this is realized, all publications should cite the URIs of the experimental data used.