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OpenTopography Data Hosting Policy

As an NSF-funded LiDAR data facility, OpenTopography’s primary emphasis is on Earth science-related, research-grade, topography and bathymetry data.  The scope of data that falls within this domain is not specifically defined, and data priorities are dictated by feedback from the OpenTopography user community, as well as our Advisory Committee.  For those data that OpenTopography does not have the resources to host, we encourage registration of these in our data catalog (coming soon) so that they are discoverable by the community. 

Minimum Data Requirements:

  • Broadly Earth science related
  • Research-oriented
  • In the public domain and without restrictions on use or redistribution
  • Documented and meaningfully organized.  Data to be distributed by OpenTopography must have accompanying metadata that describes organization of files, data schemas and coordinates, and basic attribution and citation information.

    • Data Backups and Archiving:

    OpenTopography is funded by the National Science Foundation as a data facility, not a long-term data archive.  Funding is provided on multi-year basis with periodic renewal via peer reviewed proposal.  All data hosted by OpenTopography are rigorously backed up to San Diego Supercomputer Center resources for the duration of the project.

    OpenTopography is currently exploring various mechanisms for long-term data archiving and data publication (e.g. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)) in collaboration with other projects at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, but as of now a plan for deep data archiving is not in place.  The issue of long-term preservation of research data is an open challenge for the scientific community as a whole.