NOAA's National Data Centers (NNDCs), with the support of NOAA's Comprehensive Large Array-data Stewardship System (CLASS), work directly with data producers to archive data and make it accessible to consumers.

The Archive (NNDCs) has ultimate responsibility for science data stewardship, information preservation, administration, and user support. CLASS has the responsibility to provide the information technology (IT) infrastructure to support the long-term, secure storage and access of data. Data producers are responsible for standards-compliant submission of data and metadata to the archive.

The Archive and CLASS are adopting the International Standards Organization's Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. The benefit of using OAIS-RM is that it provides a common set of functions, processes and documents that are required to accomplish the data transfers and a common terminology to establish the scope of the effort and the respective responsibilities of the data providers and the archive. An important aspect of this is the development of formal submission agreements between data producers and the Archive. CLASS supports the negotiation of these submission agreements between these two parties.