The UK Polar Data Centre (UK PDC)

The UK Polar Data Centre (UK PDC) is the focal point for Arctic and Antarctic environmental data management in the UK. Part of the Natural Environmental Research Council’s (NERC) network of environmental data centres and based at the British Antarctic Survey, we coordinate the management of polar data from UK-funded research and support researchers in complying with national and international data legislation and policy.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Source https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/uk-pdc/
Last Updated May 26, 2021, 01:37 (UTC)
Created August 3, 2020, 15:14 (UTC)
Country UK
Data Manage The preservation strategy of the PDC aims to maintain a flexible preservation system that can evolve to meet the demands of changing technology and developing user expectations. The PDC has chosen to implement a preservation strategy based upon open and available file formats wherever possible. The same ingestion procedure isused for all data resources and no judgement is made on the scholarly value of the datasets once they have been identified as suitable for deposit with the PDC. All datasets accepted for deposit must be accompanied by supporting documentation of sufficient quality to enable re-use over the long-termTo reduce the risk of obsolescence, files are generally accepted in a non-proprietary format. In some specialised scientific areas, proprietary formats that are usedextensively by the relevant community and for which there is no equivalent non-proprietary format may be accepted. Each dataset within the preservation system follows a consistent directory structure for storage.
Data Policy The UK Polar Data Centre (UK PDC) is committed to managing data effectively to provide the services required for delivering the NERC data policy and to ensure maximum exploitation and integrity of polar data. All stages of collection and processing are subject to appropriate quality assurance processes before being made available. Data are managed in compliance with the following legal frameworks: Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (UK Statutory Instrument SI 2004 No. 3391) The Antarctic Treaty 1959 European Commission INSPIRE Directive (2007) UK Polar Data Centre develops a catalogue of metadata records compliant with the ISO 19139 XML implementation schema for the ISO 19115 Geographic Information – Metadata standard and uses the DataCite Metadata Schema to issue Digital Object Identifiers for datasets. The UK Polar Data Centre will use the quality metadata to issue a unique permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a dataset and make the dataset available via data catalogues, such as the UK PDC Data Catalogue, NERC Data Catalogue or Antarctic Master Directory.
Data Sharing Principle The PDC broadly follows the guidance provided in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model in its approach to long term preservation. The stages involved in curation of digital assets are: (equivalent OAIS functional entities in parentheses)