International Long-term Data and Analysis Preservation

The preservation of scientific data for long-term use and re-analysis has been identified as a key requirement in the field of High Energy Physics and other disciplines such as Astronomy and Astrophysics, as well as Life and Earth Sciences. In collaboration with related projects in the US (in particular in close collaboration with the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy) the proposed project would take the work of the Data Preservation in HEP Study group that defines the physics motivation for long-term data preservation and many of the associated issues, and extend this to cover not only the existing use cases but also consider the needs of the LHC experiments at CERN. This work would ensure the persistent availability of existing data and enable it to be shared between organisations and across national boundaries. Now is the time to define standards for data and meta-data formats and address access and authorization issues for on-going experiments (e.g. those at the LHC) – issues that have historically been addressed only in the final years of a scientific collaboration if at all. In order to perform this work a coordination body would be established that would not only organize workshops devoted to this topic but also address key issues related to long-term data archives, such as infrastructure approaches, the financing models for maintaining these archives, the handling of intellectual property rights both during and after the lifetime of the corresponding scientific collaboration, as well as the required networking of experts both within the HEP domain but also with other preservation of scientific data for long-term use and re-analysis has been identified as a key requirement in the field of High Energy Physics and other disciplines such as Astronomy and Astrophysics, as well as Life and Earth Sciences. In collaboration with related projects in the US (in particular in close collaboration with the National Science Foundation and Department of Energy) the proposed project would take the work of the Data Preservation in HEP Study group that defines the physics motivation for long-term data preservation and many of the associated issues, and extend this to cover not only the existing use cases but also consider the needs of the LHC experiments at CERN. This work would ensure the persistent availability of existing data and enable it to be shared between organisations and across national boundaries. Now is the time to define standards for data and meta-data formats and address access and authorization issues for on-going experiments (e.g. those at the LHC) – issues that have historically been addressed only in the final years of a scientific collaboration if at all. In order to perform this work a coordination body would be established that would not only organize workshops devoted to this topic but also address key issues related to long-term data archives, such as infrastructure approaches, the financing models for maintaining these archives, the handling of intellectual property rights both during and after the lifetime of the corresponding scientific collaboration, as well as the required networking of experts both within the HEP domain but also with other disciplines and projects. The results of this work would be made available via Open Access mechanisms and would be actively disseminated