Free data for the whole world

Since 1 January 2023 all MOSAiC data is freely available to everyone in the world.

5 fair rules

for people who are planning publications based on or using any MOSAiC datasets

We highly encourage people working on publications based on or using MOSAiC datasets to stick to the following 5 rules for best practices:

1 Follow the principles of good scientific practice - Offer co-authorship on publications and other public documentation to those that have made a substantial contribution. Please be inclusive in authorship, and consult with the data providers for data streams used in your publication, to the extent possible.

2 Stick to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data publication rules - Publish code and data products you produced/used for your publication.

3 Acknowledge MOSAiC data usage - In general, used datasets must be acknowledged or referenced in publications and other public documentation. Any data used in a publication should be cited in the reference list (not only DOIs in the text). These citations would be recognized by bibliometrics and it would be findable and trackable.

4 Acknowledge MOSAiC in general - All publications and other public documentation using MOSAiC data should, if possible, include a funding acknowledgment of MOSAiC in the following form: "Data used in this manuscript was produced as part of the international Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of the Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) with the tag MOSAiC20192020”. Additionally, the Project ID given for specific expedition should be mentioned. For the Polarstern expedition this is AWI_PS122_00. Additional attributions like specific award/grant numbers might be added.

5 Use the MOSAiC project manuscript support - We highly encourage you to send us your work before submission or publication. We will help you to fulfill all suggestions and provide support to get information from the MOSAiC community. Additionally your manuscript will be listed online here when finally published.

 

Suggestions - There are 2 additional suggestions

We suggest the authors to include the "MOSAiC extended acknowledgement" by adding the following text in their manuscript acknowledgement: "We thank all those who contributed to MOSAiC and made this endeavour possible (Nixdorf et al. 2021)." Its short reference is:

 Nixdorf, U. et al. (2021). MOSAiC Extended Acknowledgement. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5179738


If you mention the RV Polarstern in your manuscript - A possible way to acknowledge the "platform" is to cite the following paper in your acknowledgements. Its reference is:

Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung. (2017). Polar Research and Supply Vessel POLARSTERN Operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute. Journal of large-scale research facilities, 3, A119. http://dx.doi.org/10.17815/jlsrf-3-163

 

MOSAiC journal series - There is the Special Feature: The Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) for MOSAiC publications in the journal:  Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene. Furthermore there is the collection Data from the MOSAiC Arctic Ocean drift experiment for MOSAiC data descriptors in the journal:  Scientific Data 

If you plan to publish a study or a data description clearly related to MOSAiC, we highly encourage you to check whether these journal series fit to your manuscript content. 

If you have any questions concerning the rules and suggestions for MOSAiC publications or you need assistance for specific requests, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact form.

 

In a nutshell: different ways to explore the data

MOSAiC datasets are published in agreement with FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data publication rules. Fully published datasets can be explored on 3 different levels of functionality. Unprocessed and primary datasets can be explored in 2 ways. Datasets ready for cooperative analysis are listed while primary data can be downloaded.


 

Fully published datasets

Explore fully published MOSAiC datasets deposited in data repositories. Download datasets and the corresponding citations from a specific data repository, use various data portals to search for datasets by specific meta data or use the visualization tool(s) to plot and track back single datasets and groups of datasets.

 

Unprocessed and primary datasets

There are datasets that have not yet been deposited in data repositories yet. These datasets require a time-consuming processing or analysis. Datasets proposed for complex cooperative analysis can be found in the Data Offers list. Primary data of the expedition can be found in the MOSAiC Central Storage.

 

 

Fully published datasets



 

Data Repositories

Fully published datasets

Data repositories host datasets, provide a standardized meta-dataset and assign unique digital object identifiers (DOIs) - datasets published in repositories don't change anymore. That means a published status of the data is fixed and citeable. The datasets are reviewed and typically processed and ready to use for analysis. The main MOSAiC data repository is PANGAEA (marked in blue). Following national funding agencies require depositing MOSAiC data in a special national repository - the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) data center, the Arctic Data Center, UK Polar Data Centre (UK PDC), and the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA). Links to these repositories are marked in grey.

Genomic data is not deposited in data repositories mentioned above rather than in genome data bases and bio-information systems. Links to these data repositories are listed at the end of the link list and marked in green.


 

Data Portals

Search for datasets in several data repsitories

Data portals aggregate metadata from various data repositories but do not host the data. These portals typically support your search for specific datasets by tools like graphical geo-localization (maps) or more options in search filters. The main MOSAiC data portal is hosted by Marine Data. It aggregates the information from all data MOSAiC repositories mentioned above except genomic data repositories. The MOSAiC part of the portal can be accessed using the link www.mosaic-portal.org. (blue marked link below). This shortcut redirects you to the MOSAiC-data-pre-filtered output of Marine Data.

Another data portal is hosted by DataOne, but this portal lists only a small subset of MOSAiC data. The Meereisportal (Sea Ice Portal) hosts a website with a collection of links related to sea ice data in the context of MOSAiC. Links to both portals are marked in grey.


 

Visualization Tool(s)

Visualize and track back MOSAiC data

There is the project M-VRE which provides an online tool with a huge number of tools to visualize MOSAiC datasets called MOSAiC webODV. MOSAiC webODV includes exclusively an increasing number of MOSAiC datasets deposited on PANGAEA (that means datasets in other repositories are not included so far!).

 

 

Unprocessed and primary datasets



 

Data Offers

Data offers for joint analysis and collaborative work

Many researchers are interested in collaborative studies and provide specific datasets feasible for this purpose. Explore data offers from researchers in our data offer list.


 

MOSAiC Central Storage

Unpublished data from the RV Polarstern

All data acquired during the expedition had been stored onboard RV Polarstern in the MOSAiC Central Storage (MCS). These datasets are often unfiltered or not processed. That means this data should not be used without involvement of the corresponding Principal Investigator (PI). The relevant PI can be easily identified by opening the README file within a specific data folder. There is a link in the section "item" to the corresponding sensor ID of the instrument registered in https://sensor.awi.de/. The PI is listed in the tab "contacts". If you need assistance to contact a PI, do not hesitate to contact us via the contact form.

Many datasets had been processed in the meanwhile and deposited in data repositories (see above). Check for fully published versions of your requested data before you start to use MCS data.