Archiving Policy

We advocate establishing a working group from the MSE community to craft a common data archiving policy. The policy must address:

1. A general definition of data to be archived; flexible to meet specific publication needs

2. Criteria for suitable repositories

3. Expectations or requirements to follow data or metadata standards

4. Definition of standards for data citation and attribution

5. Requirements and/or measures for data quality

6. Clarity on intellectual property and liability issues

7. Areas of opportunity for targeting pilot data archiving efforts (e.g. thermodynamic data)

Repositories

We also suggest establishing a complementary working group from the MSE community to develop a plan to provide supporting repositories for the MSE community. Some anticipated tasks and options include:

1. Catalogue and explore the suitability of and potential for existing materials repositories to host datasets associated with peer-reviewed journals (e.g. NIST CALPHAD database)

2. Explore the use of other established journal data repositories for their suitability for MSE data (e.g. www.datadryad.org)

3. Engage funding agencies for help in establishing a specialized MSE data repositories.

4. Develop a time-phased strategy to provide well-structured materials repository architectures.

5. Consider business models that would sustain these repository services over the long-term.