Levels of Data Management and Access

For a participant to contribute data to the AKN the following is required: a) BMDR must be completed, b) data must conform to BMDE standards, c) data must be linked to GRID protocol, and d) data are uploaded to the AKN’s primary data warehouse. When completed, the following data access levels and sharing options are available to the data owner:

• Level 1--All data are stored in the AKN’s primary data warehouse. Backups of the warehouse are made using persistent data archive techniques. AKN data managers use all data backup options consistent with the goal of no data loss (backups with periodic data integrity testing). The warehouse serves as the primary archive of all AKN data, and no applications connect directly to the warehouse. Instead, data from the warehouse are ported to separate data views created specifically to optimize the performance of an application that connects to it. Data owners can specify how their data can be used in the data views, with the option that their data are not exposed to the public at all.
• Level 2--All of option 1 with the following addition: data can be used in certain publicly available, predefined visualizations (i.e. maps and graphs), but direct access to the data is restricted.
• Level 3--Data are used in publicly available, predefined visualizations (i.e. maps and graphs). Additionally, the complete BMDE data set is available upon request, subject to approval from the original data provider.
• Level 4--Data can be used in publicly available, predefined visualizations (i.e. maps and graphs) and also may be available upon request. Additionally, some components of the data are made available to existing bioinformatic efforts (GBIF and ORNIS). These bioinformatic efforts only provide the data "marked-up" to Darwin Core, used to describe primary occurrence (location, date and species for example).
• Level 5--Data are used in publicly available, predefined visualizations (i.e. maps and graphs), and are available to existing bioinformatic efforts. Additionally, the complete BMDE data set is available for download directly via the download tool.