The Biological Station has been in existence for over 50 years and over this time myriad researchers have conducted studies here.

We feel that part of the function of a publicly funded institution like QUBS (either through direct grants or indirectly from grants to station users or university administration) is to permanently house and make available key data collected on its properties.

Some of these data have been collected over many years, in some cases decades, and thus may serve as important baselines for insights into the impact of climate change. In other cases, data may prompt new lines of investigation that were not foreseen by the original researcher or be useful in meta-analyses.

In all cases, we will respect the intellectual property (IP) rights of individual researchers who deposit their data with us. Over the next months, the means for protection of IP will unfold over as we discuss this initiative with all stakeholders. However, we envision a mechanism where interested parties, once they have identified data sets that are of interest, will submit an application to researchers who hold the IP. IP holders will in turn judge the merits of the submission and may i. decline to allow their data to be used, ii. release the data but with stated constraints (e.g. co-authorship), or iii. simply release the data.

For the time being, we (Steve Lougheed and son David) have developed a prototype data archive search engine, an on-line application form and associated documentation for such an archive. We welcome all input.