Project cost considerations

Potential data-related costs to consider at proposal stage

For most NERC grants, the resource for carrying out data management is usually sent directly to the NERC Data Centres and does not need to be included in proposals. Details of the data management funding are normally included in the details of the funding call. There may however be additional costs that are needed where non-standard, bespoke, high volume or complex data handling is required. Such additional activities may require extra researcher or support staff time, specialist skills, equipment, software, infrastructure, services or tools. 

For non-NERC grants, you should consider contacting the NERC Data Centres to ask for a cost for archiving your data. There are no hard and fast rules for costing research data handling due to the variation in content, scale, complexity, volume, planned use and deliverables of research projects. Aspects over and above standard approaches you should consider include: 

• Large data volumes e.g. over 1TB may have an additional cost.  
• Acquiring 3rd party data:  license costs, etc. 
• Processing (storage design, transforming) and analysis: are specialist skills/tools needed? Is there a licence cost for specialist tools? 
• Are data and tools needed for delivery, such as a bespoke web-presence with user tools? Will resources be costed in to build and support these in the future and for how long? 
• New technology: are new sensors being used? Will these require new ingestion/delivery methods? 
• Are any near real time data being delivered? Will new data pipelines be needed? 

Costs can be generated by the NERC Data Centres, please contact the relevant data centre for more information. 

Archiving and Sharing Research Data: 

Much depends on the long-term storage, preservation, and publication requirements beyond the period of the research, in addition to the requirements during the project. 

For NERC-funded projects, the data should be offered to one of the NERC Data Centres in the first instance. If the data cannot be archived in a repository but need to be retained, you should cost any resources needed for the duration of the data retention period.  

Most long-term repositories will require data to be in a non-proprietary format and accompanied by documentation describing the actual dataset (not the methods for addressing scientific questions) and some may require documentation to meet a specific metadata standard. However, documentation of the data generated should be carried out as standard during the project as this will be required for ensuring correct use of the data, validation of results and as an audit trail of the science (transparency).  

Activities may also need to be resourced if the data need to be re-structured or re-formatted and checked. 

There may be a cost for the long-term data preservation and dissemination services from the data centre/repository you need to use. This will depend on the policy of the data centre, your funder, the type, volume and complexity of the research data and the level of services you require. The general guidance is to contact the data centre you intend to use to be clear about costs.