Acquisition_Alert_17-01_Environmental_Data.docx

1330-52.227-70 INSTRUCTION TO OFFERORS - AWARDS EXPECTED TO GENERATE ENVIRONMENTAL DATA OR PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS (OCT 2016)

1. Environmental data and information collected, created, or produced under NOAA contracts or orders must be made discoverable by and accessible to the general public, in a timely fashion (typically within two years), free of charge or at no more than the cost of reproduction, unless an exemption, waiver, or extension is authorized by the NOAA Program. Data must be available in at least one machine-readable format, preferably a widely used or open-standard format, and must be accompanied by machine-readable documentation (metadata), preferably based on widely used or international standards.

2. Environmental data are defined by NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 212-15:Management of Environmental Data and Information as recorded and derived observations and measurements of the physical, chemical, biological, geological, and geophysical properties and conditions of the oceans, atmosphere, space environment, sun, and solid earth, as well as correlative data such as socio-economic data (personally-identifiable information regarding human subjects must be properly protected or removed), related documentation, and metadata. Digital audio or video recordings of environmental phenomena (such as animal sounds or undersea video) are included in this definition. Numerical model outputs (the data produced by computer simulations of environmental processes) are included in this definition, particularly if they are used to support the conclusion of a peer-reviewed publication. Data collected in a laboratory or other controlled environment, such as measurements of animals and chemical processes, are included in this definition. This does not apply to laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer review reports, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens.

3. Offerors must include a Data Management Plan of up to two pages describing how these requirements will be satisfied. The Data Management Plan shall be aligned with the Data Management Guidance provided by NOAA in this solicitation. The Data Management Plan and past performance regarding such plans, will be evaluated for award. A plan shall include descriptions of the types of environmental data and information expected to be created during the course of the project; the tentative date by which data accessibility will occur; maintenance or updates to the data (if required); the standards to be used for data/metadata format and content; methods for providing data access; approximate total volume of data to be collected; and prior experience in making such data accessible. Approved submission of data by the contractor to NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), or to a publicly-accessible data repository approved by the NOAA Program Office, shall be sufficient to satisfy the data accessibility requirement as of the date the submission was performed. After the acceptance of data by the government, unless specifically required in the contract, Data Management Guidance, and period of performance of the contract, the contractor is not required to maintain the data. Once the performance period for the contract has expired, the contractor is no longer responsible for maintaining this information. If the data are not submitted to NCEI, but are instead made accessible by some other means (e.g., on a web server hosted by the contractor) then the contractor shall identify the plan for continued availability.

4. The costs of data preparation, accessibility, maintenance (if required), or archiving may be included in the price unless otherwise stated in the Data Management Guidance. Accepted submission of data to the NCEI is one way to satisfy data sharing requirements; however, NCEI is not obligated to accept all submissions and may charge a fee, particularly for large or unusual datasets.

5. The Data Management Plan shall be incorporated into the resultant contract or order. NOAA may, at its own discretion, make publicly visible the Data Management Plan from funded proposals, or use information from the Data Management Plan to produce a formal metadata record and include that metadata in a Catalog to indicate the pending availability of new data.

6. Contractors are hereby advised that the final pre-publication manuscripts of scholarly articles produced pursuant to the resultant contract or order will be required to be submitted to NOAA Institutional Repository located at http://library.noaa.gov/repository after acceptance, and no later than upon publication. Such manuscripts shall be made publicly available by NOAA no later than one year after publication by the journal.

(End of solicitation language)

1330-52.227-71 AWARDS EXPECTED TO GENERATE ENVIRONMENTAL DATA OR PEER-REVIEWED

PUBLICATIONS (OCT 2016)

Special Award Conditions:

1. Data Sharing: Environmental data collected, created, or generated under this contract or order must be made publicly visible and accessible in a timely manner, free of charge or at minimal cost that is no more than the cost of distribution to the user, except where limited by law, regulation, policy, or national security requirements. Data are to be made available by the contractor in a form that would permit further analysis or reuse: data must be encoded in a machine-readable format, preferably using existing open format standards; data must be sufficiently documented, preferably using open metadata standards, to enable users to independently read and understand the data. The location (internet address) of the data should be included in the final report. Pursuant to NOAA Information Quality Guidelines, data should undergo quality control (QC) and a description of the QC process and results should be referenced in the metadata. Link to guidelines:

http://www.cio.noaa.gov/services_programs/IQ_Guidelines_103014.html

2. Environmental data are defined by NOAA Administrative Order (NAO) 212-15:Management of Environmental Data and Information as recorded and derived observations and measurements of the physical, chemical, biological, geological, and geophysical properties and conditions of the oceans, atmosphere, space environment, sun, and solid earth, as well as correlative data such as socio-economic data (personally-identifiable information regarding human subjects must be properly protected or removed), related documentation, and metadata. Digital audio or video recordings of environmental phenomena (such as animal sounds or undersea video) are included in this definition. Numerical model outputs (the data produced by computer simulations of environmental processes) are included in this definition, particularly if they are used to support the conclusion of a peer-reviewed publication. Data collected in a laboratory or other controlled environment, such as measurements of animals and chemical processes, are included in this definition. This does not apply to laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer review reports, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens.

3. Data Accessibility: Approved submission of data by the contractor to NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), or to a publicly accessible data repository as specified in the approved Data Management Plan, shall be sufficient to satisfy the data accessibility requirement as of the date the submission was performed. The contractor shall notify the NOAA Program Official when data accessibility has been performed. After the acceptance of data by the government, unless specifically required in the solicitation, Data Management Guidance, and period of performance of the contract, the contractor is not required to maintain the data. Once the performance period for the contract has expired, the contractor is no longer responsible for maintaining this information. If the data are not submitted to NCEI, but are instead made accessible by some other means (e.g., on a web server hosted by the contractor) then contractor should explain plan for continued availability after the contract period ends.

4. Timeliness: Data accessibility must occur no later than publication of a peer-reviewed article based on the data, or two years after the data are collected and verified, or two years after the original end date of the contract or order (not including any extensions or follow-on funding), whichever is soonest, unless an extension to the date for data submission has been authorized by the Contracting Officer in coordination with the NOAA Program Official.

5. Disclaimer: The Contractor shall ensure the following statement accompanies data produced under this award and made available to the public: "These data and related items of information have not been formally disseminated by NOAA, and do not represent any agency determination, view, or policy."

6. Failure to Share Data: Failure or delay on the part of the contractor to make environmental data accessible in accordance with the approved Data Management Plan, unless authorized by the Contracting Officer, may lead to enforcement actions, and will be considered by NOAA when making future award decisions. The contractor is responsible for ensuring subcontractors also meet these conditions.

7. Funding acknowledgement: Federal funding sources shall be identified by the contractor in all scholarly publications. An Acknowledgements section shall be included in the body of the publication stating the relevant contract award number. In addition, funding sources shall be reported during the publication submission process using the FundRef2 mechanism, located at http://www.crossref.org/fundref/, if supported by the Publisher.

8. Manuscript submission: The final pre-publication manuscripts of scholarly publications produced with NOAA funding shall be submitted to the NOAA Institutional Repository located at http://library.noaa.gov/repository after acceptance, and no later than upon publication, of the paper or article by a journal. NOAA will produce a publicly visible catalog entry directing users to the published version of the article. After an embargo period of one year after publication, NOAA will make the manuscript itself publicly visible, free of charge, while continuing to direct users to the published version of record.

9. Data Citation: Publications based on data, and new products derived from source data, must cite the data used according to the conventions of the Publisher, using unambiguous labels such as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). All data and derived products that are used to support the conclusions of a peer-reviewed publication must be made available in a form that permits verification and reproducibility of the results.

(End of contract language)