For individual observations, there is a proprietary period of 1 year during which, subject to the caveat below, the data from an observation will only be made available to the PI of that proposal. After this period, the data are available to the community. The proprietary period starts at the time when the data are made available to the PI of the proposal in a usable form, i.e. suitable calibration and appropriate data processing being available.
The Project Scientist decides about data rights of
partly performed observations for which he has requested
complete repetitions.
This is modified for proposals, which consist of more than
one observation of a single target, e.g. repeated observations
for variability studies.
For all data, which are delivered within the observing cycle
for which OTAC has accepted the proposal, the proprietary
period of 1 year starts when the last (part of the) data has
been made available to the PI.
Data, which are delivered after the end of the observing cycle,
for which OTAC has accepted the proposal, are treated like
individual observations, i.e. each data set gets (individually)
a proprietary period of one year.
The end times of the previous observing cycles are:
No proprietary rights will be allocated by default for data resulting from ``Very Large Programs''.
But the Project Scientist can assign data rights.
Principal Investigators, who wish to obtain data rights for ``Very Large Programs''
have to state the request explicitly in the scientific justification of the proposal.
The PI retains the proprietary rights for the whole
dataset in a proposal if no other recommendation was given by the OTAC.
In the XRPS, the proposers may also select the option ``SSC follow-up''.
By doing so, they allow the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre
to conduct follow-up observation of the serendipitous source content in
the EPIC field of view (for details see: XRPS Proposers Guide and the
XMM-Newton Users Handbook).
The overall goal of the SSC follow-up programme is to support the
community's access to, and exploitation of, the serendipitous data from
XMM-Newton, and as such all the results will be made public through the
XMM-Newton Science Archive.
Except where there are alternate plans to conduct a follow-up programe
based on the serendipitous X-ray source content of their XMM-Newton fields,
proposers are encouraged to select the ``SSC follow-up'' option in XRPS.
Data taken during a slew of the spacecraft become directly
available to the community.
In accordance with ESA's rules concerning information and data,
ESA retains the right to use any data obtained by XMM-Newton
for instrument evaluation, diagnostic and
calibration purposes, while maintaining scientific confidentiality
during the proprietary period.
ESA also reserves the right to use any data for public relations
purposes; in this case, due acknowledgment shall be given to the
PI of the proposal and to the PI of the
consortium that built the instrument.
Each publication using XMM-Newton data should include the
target name, the date of the observation and the observation-ID
to ensure that the data can be uniquely identified.
Any publication based on data from XMM-Newton observations shall
acknowledge that fact by a footnote, preferably on the initial page
in the paper: