IOOS partners must describe how they will provide initial stewardship and ensure permanent archiving of their observations, model outputs, metadata and derived information products of archival quality. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is the nominal archive center for IOOS data. IOOS data providers must archive their data at NCEI.

• Data providers are expected to provide for storage of data, metadata and other supporting documentation and algorithm descriptions, to establish data recovery mechanisms, and to perform off-site storage of backups until the data and metadata are submitted to NCEI for archiving.
• Data must be stored in one of the IOOS Common Data Formats and adhere to IOOS Metadata Standards.
• NOAA IOOS will facilitate execution of NCEI partnerships with IOOS partners.
• RA data already in the NCEI Ocean Archive System can be accessed through NCEI’s IOOS Archive Data Portal.