Subject: FLUXNET2015 data policy From: Jitendra Kumar Date: 03/22/2017 08:53 PM To: "'Dennis Baldocchi'" , Margaret Torn , Dario Papale , DAAgarwal@lbl.gov CC: Forrest Hoffman , William Hargrove , Nathan Collier , Jitendra Kumar Dennis, Margaret, Dario, Deb et. al: We want to make you aware of some issues that we have encountered recently associated with the FLUXNET2015 data use policy. Leveraging the new FLUXNET2015 dataset, we attempted to produce high-resolution global maps of GPP monthly over a 20-year period, after first producing maps that showed the representativeness of the current constellation of FLUXNET2015 sites across the planet. As you know, these analyses of network representativeness are valuable, since they highlight regions globally that are currently poorly represented by FLUXNET2015, evidence that justifies and informs the establishment of additional tower sites where they are most needed. Production of the “best guess” global estimates of GPP patterns was challenging scientifically and represented a substantial supercomputing and geospatial analysis investment. These global maps of monthly GPP appear to offer a useful alternative and possibly an improvement compared to the FLUXNET-MTE product. However, we have withdrawn the manuscript describing the products and scaling methodology from consideration for publication in ESSD, because, despite great motivation to do so, we are unable to comply with the requirements of the FLUXNET2015 Tier 2 data use policy. If any Tier 2 data are used, then all data must be treated as the Tier 2 data type. Just the publication of a paper with more than 200 listed authors produced substantial pragmatic problems with publishers. ESSD editors suggested that we might simply include a lumped FLUXNET2015 team-author as a way to credit the data providers, with an explicit listing of contributors in a table and in acknowledgements. We thought that this was a good idea, but some FLUXNET PIs found this team authorship to be insufficient for satisfying the Tier 2 data use requirements. Liberally listing many authors explicitly leads to two additional liabilities for potential data users like us. PIs we list as authors may not wish to be associated with this work, or may not have felt that they deserved authorship. On the other hand, there is a worse risk of NOT listing PIs as authors, when they believe that they should have been included. Thus, it is difficult for us to come up with an authorship strategy that would satisfy all potential authors/contributors. One particular sentence in the FLUXNET2015 Tier 2 data use policy represents the focus of this problem: “Significant Contributions will result in co-authorship.” There is no guidance about what sorts of contributions might be deemed as “significant,” nor any guidance about who decides whether particular contributions are significant. Many FLUXNET PIs believe that providing the data in the first place represents a “significant contribution,” while other PIs will think that only contributing ideas, text, and/or discussion to the manuscript would be significant. This open-ended sentence thus results in great confusion. However, what may be more important is that those who want to be co-authors may want the paper to be a different paper. They can effectively kill the paper the data user wanted to write. Current data policy requires that at least three weeks be allowed to data providers to respond to request. However, if a data provider does not respond in three weeks, the data policy does not explicitly state whether the data produced by the provider can or cannot be used. If the answer is that it cannot be used, then no full-collection synthesis products can ever be generated without traceable acceptance from all 212 (and increasing) data providers. Given the requirements for Tier 2 data, perhaps the data should not be made available to users until the criteria are met. That would save users (like us) from investing time and effort in analysis which may not be publishable if the data providers do not grant permission or agree with the said study at a later date. We have no expectation of any particular actions on your part regarding this matter; indeed, no group of scientists is in any position to mandate any rules of data use on any other larger group. In this way, FLUXNET is less of an organization, and more of a loose global confederation. No one group can speak for the whole, nor make decisions for the rest. Nevertheless, we estimate that we have lost about a year of effort in this process, with little to show for it. We may drop back to only using Tier 1 data for this analysis, but, given the paucity of flux towers globally even including Tier 2 sites, we fear that the global results may be of such poor quality that they would not merit publication. Thank you for your attention, Jitu, Forrest, Bill and Nathan -- Jitendra Kumar Terrestrial Systems Modeling Group Environmental Sciences Division Oak Ridge National Laboratory Joint Assistant Professor The Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research University of Tennessee Knoxville Phone: 865-574-9467 Email: jkumar@climatemodeling.org, kumarj@ornl.gov Homepage: http://www.climatemodeling.org/~jkumar