The success of scientific international co-operative programmes such as the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme LWF strongly depends on whether they share scientific data and information.
Data sharing enhances advancement of scientific knowledge in economically relevant issues. Therefore we encourage the use of our data for scientific purposes and education. This requires an agreement over the terms and conditions of the exchange of data and end products (i.e. publications) between the LWF programme and the data users. The LWF encourages an intensive collaboration between the data user and the responsible researcher from the LWF programme.
A correct citation in publications and an appropriate acknowledgement in follow up products is required and considered a matter of professional ethics.
- For Swiss national requests on LWF data, the terms and conditions of the “Agreement on LWF Data” are to be applied (pdf, 38 KB).
- For international requests on LWF data, the terms and conditions of the 'Intellectual Property and Publication Policy' of the ICP Forests programme are to be applied.
For appropriate citation of LWF studies and data, we kindly ask authors to include the following citation and reference in their “Methods" or “Acknowledgements" section:
This study relies on data from the Swiss Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research programme LWF (www.lwf.ch), which is part of the UNECE Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests ICP Forests (www.icp-forests.net). We are in particular grateful to X who provided the Z data.
Reference: Schaub M, Dobbertin M, Kräuchi N, Kaennel Dobbertin M (2011) Preface-long-term ecosystem research: understanding the present to shape the future. Environ. Monit. Assess. 174, 1-2.