¶ General principles
BIAD’s key objective is to provide a constantly growing standardised database for all types of archaeological data. Researchers are incentivised to deposit high quality data which is rewarded with reciprocated access to other database that is not yet publicly available, and co-authorship if their data are used. Data are typically mined from published literature by researchers, who harmonise the data according to the BIAD structure, and batch import. BIAD is a relational database, not a data repository, and therefore has a high barrier of data entry in terms of internal consistency and hygiene. Nevertheless, the data structure is highly flexible and is constantly adjusting to accommodate the needs of new researchers. Therefore, BIAD is also suitable for new primary data that has not yet been published.
BIAD has strict fair usage policies to ensure users contribute a fair amount of data, have an influence on how the data they have contributed is used, and are fairly acknowledged as authors when their data are subsequently used by others.
¶ Data tiers
Data exists in one of three tiers; Private, Shared, Public. Researchers may wish to contribute data to one or more tiers. Tiered access is achieved with Row Level Security (RLS), which allows researchers to obfuscate their data contributions from others for an agreed period. Data naturally progresses through three tiers, eventually becoming public access.
Private: Typically for new primary data that is not yet published, where researchers wish to maintain exclusive private control of their data for several years. These data can only be accessed by the providers and will progress to the Shared tier automatically after the embargo period. Data stored in Private benefits from the existing BIAD relational structures and constraints, to ensure good data hygiene at the input stage, and avoid inconsistent or junk entries. However, storing only in Private is not enough to qualify for immediate access to Shared.
Shared: For researchers who can commit to contributing a significant amount of data in exchange for full access to the Shared (and public) tier. Typically this comes from data-mining existing published literature, and batch importing into BIAD. These data can only be accessed by other researchers who have also contributed to the Shared tier, and will progress to the Public tier automatically after the embargo period.
Public: Full public access. This will go online soon.
¶ Citations
All data entry is user stamped and time stamped, to assist in auditing and ensure ownership is properly tracked. BIAD is committed to ensuring all data contributors are properly and fairly acknowledged and or cited, including ‘hidden contributors’ such as students or lab assistants who contributed to the data generation.
As such, BIAD encourages data entry ‘user groups’ rather than a single ‘user’, so that all contributors belonging to a single user group can be easily queried in the database, and easily cited.
Private: Your data held in a private tier belongs entirely to you, therefore no additional citations are required when you publish these data. Please acknowledge BIAD.
Shared: These data are shared, and therefore require a fair notice of intention to the contributors who provided that data that you intend to use these data for a publication. This therefore requires the usual negotiations for any publication to ensure significant data contributors are cited as contributing authors, whilst smaller contributors might just be acknowledged. Additionally, please acknowledge BIAD.
Public: There are no constraints to using these data for publication. Please add the complete list of all BIAD contributors to supplementary Information. Additionally, please acknowledge BIAD.
| Private | Shared | Public | |
| Citation requirements | None | Co-authorship for agreed data contributors | List all BIAD contributors in Supplementary Information |
| Database support for contributors | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Database support for users | Yes | Yes | No |
¶ Acknowledging contributions for publications
Although BIAD is a collaborative project between scientific projects it is made possible through individual contributions made by individuals, who put extensive effort into collecting, structuring, and importing datasets. We view these contributions as essential for any publications which draw from BIAD data. For guidelines on how to properly acknowledge individual contributions when using data from BIAD we refer you to: CRediT author statement | Elsevier
¶ Data withdrawal
Private: Your data held in a private tier belongs entirely to you. No-one else has seen it, and if you decide BIAD is no longer the best solution for your data, you are able to remove it. Please discuss this with the BIAD committee.
Shared: removal is permitted If the import was very recent, but with time these data must be retained in BIAD to ensure auditability of other research that relied on these data.
Public: removal is not possible.