About us

Background

The Bolin Centre for Climate Research is a multi-disciplinary consortium of over 400 scientists in Sweden that conduct research and graduate education related to the Earth´s climate.

We focus on extending and disseminating knowledge about the Earth’s natural climate system, climate variations, climate impacting processes, climate modelling, human impact on the climate and climate impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity and human conditions as well as how society can minimize negative impacts.

The centre was formed in 2006 by Stockholm University, the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI).

The Bolin Centre provides support for data management to our scientists. A repository for research data, called the Bolin Centre Database, is hosted by the centre.

Objective

The main objective of the Bolin Centre Database initiative is to ensure the preservation, interoperability and open access of climate and other Earth system research data from scientists at the centre and their collaborators.

Policy

The Bolin Centre Database follows the Open Science policy for Stockholm University.

This includes the view that the university's research outputs, data, and source code are published under open licenses whenever possible, while ensuring information security throughout the research process in line with the university's information security policy.

Research outputs, data, and source code are managed, published, preserved, and disposed of according to the FAIR Principles, according to which research data should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

The Bolin Centre for Climate Research endorses that as many datasets as possible from the centre are made findable from its database and encourages that all scientists in the centre contribute to this goal. The Bolin Centre Database should therefore provide a safe data store and easily accessible portal for sharing data from the centre, including a service to provide persistent data identifiers and data citation guidelines. The Bolin Centre Database should provide assistance on data management to the centre’s scientists and also help to make their science understandable by a wider audience through visualizing important datasets.

Following the Open Science policy for Stockholm University, the Bolin Centre Database should continuously develop and comply with data protection regulation and guidelines advocated by the EU, the Swedish government, the Swedish Research Council, and other research funding bodies and relevant actors.

Mission

The Bolin Centre Database should:

• Make data from all kinds of research at the Bolin Centre findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) through a well-managed digital data repository.
• Contribute to the spreading of knowledge about climate and Earth system science by visually and textually highlighting what selected datasets of particular interest can tell.

Target community

Data contributors

The Bolin Centre Database primarly publishes data from scientists at the Bolin Centre for Climate Research and their collaborators, also at other universities and research organisations. Data related to climate and the Earth system from scientists at Stockholm University, who are not members of the Bolin Centre, are also welcome.

Data users

The target audience includes all individuals worldwide who are interested in using data from climate and Earth system research.

Services and responsibilities

• Data held by the Bolin Centre Database are provided with searchable metadata and persistent identifiers. Data are stored safely within Sweden, frequently backed up and preserved for a long time into the future.
• Data held by the Bolin Centre Database are by default freely accessible and re-usable according to information provided for each dataset, including how the data shall be cited.
• The scientists who create the data are responsible for the content of the data that are uploaded.
• The database staff is responsible for data integrity after the data have been uploaded.
• The database staff shall assist scientists at the centre in the curation of data and metadata, as well as giving advice and support regarding research data management.
• The Bolin Centre Database is not an archive in a legal sense, but should facilitate for digital archiving of data at Stockholm University.