FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is PANGAEA ?
PANGAEA is a public library for data from earth system research. The system is open to any individual scientist or project for the archiving of single files, data collections, time series, or supplements to publications. Data can be georeferenced in time and/or space.

Who are the hosts?

 * Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research http://www.awi.de
 * MARUM – Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences, University Bremen http://www.marum.de

Are there any restrictions in data access?
Data is in Open Access and thus freely available via download on the Internet. A few data sets might be password protected for a moratorium period; contact PI for access.

Under which license are data made available?
By default data is available under a Creative Commons license.

How long does it take to get a DOI?
PANGAEA is a relational database, that means that all data and metadata are quality checked, harmonized, and processed for machine readability, which allows efficient and reliable re-usage of your data. Depending on the extent and complexity of your data submission the editorial process and minting of DOI names might take up to 8 weeks or even more. Please therefore submit your data ahead of time (e.g. before submission of a manuscript to a journal).

Can I make changes in my published dataset?
As long as your dataset is in the status "in review" or "registration in progress" changes to the data are possible. Once your dataset is published and the DOI registered no changes to the dataset are possible anymore. If you have found errors in your published dataset please open a new Data submission with the corrected data and state that it is a new version of your data. We will then put access restrictions on the erroneous dataset and link it to the new version. Normally, a small comment (explanation) is added to the old version explaining what was wrong.

What is the data export format?
Data is available as text/ASCII files (ending is .tab but you can open it in any text editor or in Excel just as .txt files), tab-delimited, with a header for meta information. Large files might be available as binary objects (e.g. seismic data, models), other formats my follow ISO standards (e.g. images, films).

What is the resolution of the data?
Data stored in PANGAEA stems from a wide range of parameter from all parts of the geosphere (atmo-, hydro-, cryo-, bio-, lithosphere). The spatial and temporal resolution can differ between sets and is described in the metadata. Examples: you can submit data from one day/several days (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.778386), one month (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.921529), one year (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.272466), one campaign (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.913181), from one region (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.753970) or globally (https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.919662).

Which parameter (variables) are available?
PANGAEA contains data associated with over 180,000 parameters from all fields of earth system research. See the Parameter for details and example lists.

Where are the data stored?
Most of the data is stored in a relational database. Large binary files, images or proprietary formats are stored in a tape drive silo, requiring an access time of a minute. All data is secured by a daily backup on tapes in two different buildings. Data is also available through a data warehouse.

Can data be password protected?
Yes! For a moratorium (in general for a maximum of 2 years), a login with password can be added to the data, e.g. until the data are published, a project has ended or on request by the owner.

How to submit data?
Submit data to the the PANGAEA's data submission form. Keep some rules for data submission in mind. After import the investigator receives a link (DOI) for proof-read.

Are there any costs?
Basic operation is covered through public funding, but we have to seek for additional funds, in particular for preparing and archiving new data. In case data are submitted through a project which has publication costs as part of the funding, PANGAEA would appreciate a financial contribution of 500.– € (net) for a data submission (e.g. at the DFG as part of the costs for open access publications). Other forms of funded collaborations can be negotiated. Please, contact us for further information and invoicing.

Contact
info(at)pangaea.de