WCGA Data Sharing Policy

General Statement

The WCGA and the West Coast Ocean Data Portal seek to promote and advocate the spirit of “open data” to ensure that data products are made freely and readily accessible to our stakeholders and the public in machine readable formats.

Data/Metadata Format and Standards

WCGA and West Coast Ocean Data Portal (WCODP) Action Coordination Team (ACT) will ensure compatibility with federal requirements, and any data generated through grant activities be required to complete ISO or FGDC metadata and generate OGC Services.

Data Authorship and Citation

The WCGA will strive to advertise information related to the original authors of the data that is discoverable through our portal. It is vitally important to recognize contributions from our partners by providing the original source and citation for any data.

Data Stewardship and Preservation

Contracting Institutions and state agencies will work with their respective state data network and Geoportal to identify long term hosting and publishing custodians for any original data created. This will include the requirement that such custodians have the ability to publish metadata and WMS in a way accessible to the West Coast Data Registry (Catalog standard, Web accessible folders, etc). The custodians will also be required to notify the West Coast Ocean Data Portal Coordinator of new data made available to their state geoportal so that the West Coast Ocean Data Portal Coordinator can target that new dataset for inclusion in the Data Registry. Similarly, and data development or enhancement projects will be subject to the same requirements (i.e. custodians are identified at the state or partner level, metadata and WMS are generated and published online, West Coast Ocean Data Portal Coordinator is contacted).

Access

Access to original data will be made available through both the respective state or Network geoportal as well a West Coast Data Registry. The West Coast Registry will then republish resources for harvesting by the federal ocean.data.gov.