NERC Data Centres

NERC requires that all environmental data of long-term value generated through NERC-funded activities must be submitted to NERC for long-term management and dissemination. For the majority of data, this will mean curating data with one of the NERC Environmental Data Centres. 

NERC has five data centres that make up the Environmental Data Service. Each data centre covers different domains and data should be deposited with the most relevant data centre: 

• British Oceanographic Data Centre - marine 
• Centre for Environmental Data Analysis - atmospheric, Earth Observation, and solar and space physics) 
• Environmental Information Data Centre - terrestrial and freshwater 
• National Geoscience Data Centre - geoscience 
• UK Polar Data Centre - polar and cryosphere 

Details of which NERC Environmental Data Centre the data will be curated with are recorded in the grant’s data management plan. This plan will be supported, developed and agreed with a NERC Environmental Data Centre. 

Model data should be deposited with the NERC Data Centre, if it is of long-term value (see the NERC Data Value Checklist). Model code should be stored in a GitHub repository for long term preservation. The repository can be published in Zenodo and the DOI of the repository should be given to the NERC Data Centre for reference and to link it to any data being published from that code. 

Exceptions can be made for certain types of data which are more appropriately curated in a specialist repository, which would be agreed when creating the data management plan. Some examples are: 

• UK Data Service (UKDS) – for social sciences data 
• The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) – for ‘omics data 

Any exceptions must be agreed with a NERC Data Centre.