Guiding Policies of the WDC

CUAHSI is funded by the National Science Foundation to operate the WDC in service to the community of U.S.-based  academic researchers interested in water science. However, consistent with core CUAHSI values of collaboration, transparency and openness and recognizing that access to data collected by many other entities benefits that primary community of researchers, CUAHSI adopts the following policies:

1. All software developed by the CUAHSI WDC will be open source and freely available to anyone, including commercial entities, without license fees.
2. CUAHSI will work with government agencies and non-governmental agencies to make their data available for academic research through the CUAHSI WDC; resources utilized for this interaction will be commensurate with the perceived value of these data to the academic research community.
3. Non-university data will, in general, be hosted by the data collecting organization and not by CUAHSI. Exceptions to this policy will be reviewed by the Informatics Standing Committee.
4. User support services for data publication and data access, which are limited, will be prioritized as follows:
1. US-based universities
2. International universities
3. Non-profit organizations
4. Others 
5. CUAHSI WDC will actively participate in standards-setting activities through entities such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), and the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). Allocation of effort for these activities is at the discretion of the Director of the WDC with oversight by the Informatics Standing Committee.

Navigate to other policy items:

• Mission
• Governance
• Use Agreement
• User Committee
• Standing Committee Charge

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