Overview

ECMWF Product Distribution Rules are designed to provide access to different user types while ensuring a level playing field is maintained in the competitive market place, and each user is given the same licence agreement to govern the conditions of use. 

This means that not all users are entitled to a Research Project licence but may require a Service Provider licence. The nature of an organisation does not guarantee access: some commercial entities conduct research, while some research institutions provide services (whether for profit or not).

Note that all Research Project requests are subject to management approval (either by ECMWF or a Member & Co-operating State Licensor).  

Research Projects may be granted free-of-charge access to ECMWF Products (both historical and real-time), but in some cases, access fees or service charge fees may apply. 

Key Definitions & Clauses

  • Research Project: Any time-bound** project organised for non-commercial research purposes only, where an ongoing/continuous service based on ECMWF Products is not permitted without written consent from the Licensor. A necessary condition for the recognition of non-commercial purposes is that all the results obtained are openly available at delivery costs only, without any delay linked to commercial objectives, and that the research itself is submitted for open publication.

    ** Research licences cannot be longer than the duration of the project itself and up to a maximum of 3 years, whichever is shorter. A research licence may be renewed for research projects lasting longer than 3 years.

  • Results: may include written reports, publications, presentations, and other forms of research output that do not involve the distribution or real-time Products or services based on real-time Products except where permission is granted.


Clauses of note

- 14. The Licensee who is defined as a Research User in Annex 1 to this agreement shall:

    1. Provide annual feedback on the progress of the Research Project, including any publications, presentations or datasets published as part of the Research
    2. Acknowledge the Licensor and ECMWF as the source of the data in any Results, publications, presentations or datasets published as part of the Research Project in line with Article 8 below.
    3. The Licensee shall grant to the Licensor a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use the Results and outputs obtained by the Research Project.

 

The spirit of the ECMWF Research Project licence is designed to facilitate collaborative research. Prototyping of potential services, providing any service or future commercialisation is not supported. 

In general, there should be no dependency on the timeliness of delivery for research project data and 24/7 support will not be provided. 



Alternatives

Unfortunately, ECMWF is unable to support every Research Project and management/Licensors may decline free provision, or charges may apply for the delivery of data. 

However, we can recommend a number of alternative datasets which may be useful: 


Some of the cloud providers are hosting ECMWF open data since the start in January 2022 and the NCAR archive goes back to ~2011 for many parameters.


Application Process

Real-time data

If you qualify with the definitions above, you can use the ECMWF Product Requirements Catalogue to submit a 'quote' for your data requirements. This step is important as it allows management to review the project scope and cost. Once a quote is submitted, the Licensor will contact you to obtain a project description which includes (but is not limited to): 

  • Name of the project
  • Organisation research is affiliated with 
  • A description of the project
  • Project duration
  • Intended project outputs 
  • Project participants
  • URL(s) to the project if applicable
  • Please indicate why real-time data is required and whether other sources have been used to date. 

 This information will be reviewed by management and a decision will be communicated. 

Note that it can take up to 2 weeks to obtain a decision. 


Historical data (MARS Archive) 

While the data in the Archive Catalogue is governed by CC-BY-4.0, the access method (WebAPI) is not free or open by default. Charges to access the system start from 1,500 EUR per year for Service Providers. 

The key distinction here is that while the licence for the data permits you to provide a service, the fee to access this data will only be waived where there will be no service provision.

For Research Projects, fees may be waived with management approval but will not be granted for users intending to provide a service (irrespective of whether it is commercial or not).

Once you have submitted a request for access to ECMWF Historical Data, you will be asked to provide the following information: 

  • Name of the project
  • Organisation research is affiliated with 
  • A description of the project
  • Project duration
  • Intended project outputs 
  • Project participants
  • URL(s) to the project if applicable
  • Please indicate why real-time data is required and whether other sources have been used to date.  

The information will be reviewed by management and a decision will be communicated.


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Contents of this space

Useful Links

ECMWF Product Distribution Rules

ECMWF Standard Licence Agreement 

ECMWF Free & Open Data

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