y 



V 



4. Proposed investigations must fall within the scope of the overall 

 program; the quality of research must be excellent; and the pro- 

 gram must be of demonstrable benefit. 



Partly because teamwork is so essential to the success of the Decade, 

 a strong policy has been adopted concerning the management of scientific 

 data obtained during the program (See Appendix). Prior to the final 

 commitment of support to any project by the National Science Founda- 

 tion Office for the IDOE, representatives from the appropriate U.S. na- 

 tional data repositories must agree with the principal investigators of 

 the project on the documentation required for each type of data expected 

 to be generated, in order to ensure meaningful interpretation by others. 

 The methods, formats, and time limits whereby the data and ancillary 

 information will be transferred to the appropriate repositories are 

 also agreed upon. The validity and strength of the agreements are then 

 reviewed and approved by the Office as a final requisite to funding a 

 project. The Environmental Data Service of the U.S. National Oceanic 

 and Atmospheric Administration has been designated to handle IDOE 

 data and is funded by the National Science Foundation Office for the IDOE 

 to carry out this work. The specific repositories are : 1) the National Ocean- 

 ographic Data Center (NODC) ; 2) the National Geophysical Data Center 

 (NGDC) ; and 3) the National Climatic Center (NCC). The Smithsonian 

 Oceanographic Sorting Center (SOSC), a part of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, has also been designated an IDOE repository. NODC, the leading 

 center for IDOE data inventory and information, is the repository for 

 chemical, geological, physical, and biological data. NGDC is the reposi- 

 tory for geophysical data, and NCC for climatic data. SOSC is the reposi- 

 tory for biological specimens. 



All IDOE program data become a part of the U.S. Declared National 

 Program and are reported internationally. All data submitted to NODC 

 automatically become part of the notifications to the International Data 

 Exchange System, are published in the International Journal of Marine 

 Science, and are listed in the Index-Referral Service of the World Data 

 Center/Oceanography. In addition, the National Science Foundation Office 

 for the IDOE will publish annual summaries of all data collected by IDOE 

 projects. 



