Data Management

The Canadian Integrated Ocean Observing System (CIOOS) is a digital network of freely accessible marine data resources. The CIOOS Asset Map and Metadata Catalogue are the main platforms for discovering and accessing CIOOS data.

CIOOS is accepting open ocean data. A brief overview of CIOOS standards, data management, and the contribution process is outlined below. Please contact CIOOS Pacific to learn more about how to share your data with CIOOS Pacific. 

CIOOS Standards

Metadata is information about data that assists users in finding, assessing, accessing, and reusing relevant data. Ocean data that is integrated into CIOOS must follow CIOOS metadata standards. 

CIOOS has developed a CIOOS Metadata Profile for the ISO 19115 suite of standards (ISO 19115-1:2014, ISO 19115-2:2019 and ISO 19115-3:2016.) These standards were selected to ensure interoperability with the national and international ocean data community, including the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). This profile includes required, recommended, and optional fields that provide users with basic understanding of that resource.

Metadata may be harvested from contributors via the data catalogue (CKAN) or ERRDAP remote servers. 

Contribute Ocean Data

The back-end technical process for contributing ocean data to CIOOS is under development. For more information, please contact CIOOS Pacific. 

Citation Guidelines

ESIP Data Citation Guidelines (2019) should be used when referencing datasets under CIOOS stewardship. The citation includes metadata found in the catalogue and should take the following format:  

[Responsible Party]. [Public release date]. [Title]. [Version ID]. [Subset used]. CIOOS Pacific. [Permalink]. [Access Date].

Examples: 

Conditions of Use

An important goal of CIOOS is to promote open access and reuse of ocean data. As such, CIOOS accepts only non-sensitive open marine data. The CIOOS Data Policy will supply additional details, and will be released once it is complete.

CIOOS believes in the FAIR data principles (Wilkinson et al. 2016) to promote maximum reuse of research data. FAIR data is:

  • Findable: Data and supplementary materials have sufficiently rich metadata and a unique and persistent identifier.
  • Accessible: Metadata and data are understandable to humans and machines. Data is deposited in a trusted repository.
  • Interoperable: Metadata uses a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation.
  • Reusable: Data has clear usage licenses and provides accurate information on provenance.

CIOOS supports a limited number of open data licence agreements, and imposes no restrictions on the data beyond those required by said licences. The recommended license agreement employed is CC-BY, which requires that users i) provide attribution, ii) provide a link to the licence, and iii) indicate whether changes were made. Users are expected to confirm the licence and its requirements prior to utilizing a data set. For more information, please see the CIOOS Data Licencing & Acknowledgement Agreement (forthcoming), or the ISO 19115 Constraints section for a specific dataset.

Disclaimer
While every effort is made to quality control the data available on the CIOOS platform through our metadata standards, data users assume all risks and responsibilities associated with the direct or indirect use of the data and/or associated information. If you have concerns related to a data set on CIOOS, please contact the data contributor directly.