NSF supported investigators are obligated to contribute their data to a national data center as part of strong new NSF data management procedures. Whether scientists find this to be simple or tortuous largely depends on the operational process the receiving data center has designed. The NSIDC, NCAR, and UCAR partners that built the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information System (CADIS) for the NSF/OPP Arctic Observing Network (AON) are now funded to develop data management services for all NSF Arctic research projects. We aim to ease and clarify the scientist's role in good data stewardship, and will measure success by the assessment of contributing investigators, obtained through user surveys and via direct interaction with the investigators. Advanced CADIS (ACADIS) will house data from existing projects supported by the NSF/OPP/ Arctic Section (ARC) and build on features of CADIS that investigators and program managers appreciate. These include the ability to access data files as soon as they are contributed (uploaded), and to author standard metadata using limited controlled vocabularies.

While CADIS emphasized serving AON field project investigators, ACADIS will embrace long-term data stewardship for the wider research community as well. Challenges are both technological and human in nature. For example, technology can address data visualization needs well, but only after data are in a standard format and described with standard vocabularies. We must work with communities of scientists to develop these standards and allow the investigators to meet their obligations promptly and efficiently. Even so, rising to a gold standard of stewardship for all data contributions will not be possible. An advisory board will help us prioritize data collections. Growing use of ACADIS data by the broad science community to address the changes underway in the Arctic will be a key measure of success.