UKIRT Proprietary Periods

UKIRT Proprietary Periods

Proprietary rights to UKIRT data were confirmed by the UKIRT Board in November 2007. The overall policy is as follows: 

Data obtained for approved UKIRT projects shall remain proprietary to the PI for a period of one year, counting from the end of the semester in which the data are obtained. Following the expiration of this period, the data shall become public and accessible through the Cassegrain and WFCAM archives. The proprietary period may be extended or reduced in exceptional circumstances on  request, at the Director’s discretion. The proprietary period for survey/campaign projects will be determined on a case-by- case basis by the Board. This will normally be decided at the time of project approval based on the information provided by the PI.

Individual clarifications and extensions are noted below.


PI data (all instruments)

For conventional PI projects approved by the TAG, regardless of instrument, data remain proprietary to the PI for a period of one year, counting from the end of the semester in which the data were obtained.  This proprietary period may be extended or reduced in exceptional circumstances on a case-by-case basis at the Director’s discretion. The latter clause is required (e.g.) to handle cases of long-term illness or leave, students who need the uniqueness of their data preserved until their theses are submitted, or where fast public access is a requirement.

UKIDSS Data

UKIDSS is an ESO public survey and the data are therefore not proprietary within the ESO Nations. There are, however, restrictions on access to UKIDSS data. The UKIDSS data policy states: that data releases are made immediately public to the ESO countries and to named individuals in Japan; and that data are made world-public 18 months following each data release. 

Campaign Data

UKIRT now caters for four large-scale campaign observing programmes, with different data-taking styles and release modes:

  1. Coma Cluster Survey:  There will be two individual observing seasons, in Spring 2008 and Spring 2009.
  2. WFCAM Transit Survey:  Data for this project will be acquired continually. The objective is to detect transient events rather than to build up a cumulative data set.
  3. GRB Campaign: Data for this project will be acquired on a sporadic basis as GRBs are detected, and this group usually publishes its results quickly. As for the WTS, the objective is to study specific events rather than to build up a cumulative data set.
  4. HiZELS: This project will be scheduled for roughly a week during each WFCAM block, so data will be acquired on a punctuated, continual basis.

For each of these Campaigns, the Board has agreed that the proprietary policy will be the same as that for normal PI data.