Submit Data and Final Reports

At the conclusion of your study, you are required to submit copies of final reports, peer-reviewed publications, theses, dissertations, conference abstracts, or other end products that resulted from your study. You may also need to send "raw" materials from the course of your research like datasets, field notes, photographs and maps, etc. if the park indicated such on your permit.

After you submit files, the park's research coordinator will review them for compliance with federal policy related to information security (e.g. personally identifable information and details about specially-protected park resources). Once the files are compliant, the park will keep your files locally and/or in a publicly available NPS digital repository called DataStore. Depending on information sensitivity and permission levels (see below), your files in DataStore will be viewable only by particular NPS employees, by all NPS employees, or by the public.

Please ask the research coordinator how they want you to submit these items. Many prefer that you send them directly by email. Some may ask you to upload them in RPRS per the following steps.

How to Do This

You can use this procedure at any time to submit files -- at the end of a field season, at the end of a study, or even years later when you have published a peer-reviewed paper. Please do not use this procedure to submit Investigator Annual Reports.

On your Investigator Dashboard, in the Frequent Tasks section, click on “Submit Data and Reporting Files.”

Upper portion of the final report submittal form.

You will land on the “Submit Final Report” page. In the upper section of the page you choose the study or studies for which you are reporting and then upload and describe the relevant files.

• Select Studies: Select one or more studies that are covered by the files you plan to submit.
• Title and Abstract: Enter a descriptive title and brief abstract for the set of files you plan to submit (e.g. “This collection contains field notes, raw data in a spreadsheet, a published analysis of temporal trends and spatial diversity, a map of sensor locations, and images of sensors installed in the field for an air quality monitoring project in Yellowstone National Park.”)
• Authors: Click the “Add Author” button to add the names of people associated with producing the files. Repeat as necessary.
• Attached Files: Click the “Add Attachment” button to start a new file upload. You will be prompted for a brief description of the individual file and given the opportunity to upload the file of interest. Repeat as necessary.

Lower portion of the final report submittal form.

In the bottom section of the page you indicate whether your files contain sensitive information that should not be made public (e.g. locations of endangered species) and whether there are restrictions related to intellectual property rights. The check boxes and radio buttons will limit who can see your files (e.g. the public vs. the park's research coordinator). You can use the text box at the bottom to provide any additional notes regarding use of the files you submit.

Ensure that you have uploaded and described all relevant files and then push the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page. If you have more files to submit later, you may repeat this process.

Once you submit, the research coordinator will have the opportunity to review and edit any aspect of your submission. For example, they may remove sensitive information that you included in a file description. Or they may attach a file to your collection that you separately emailed to them. This ability to edit is essential for the NPS to ensure the accuracy and security of information in DataStore.

Example of an entry in DataStore.

NPS

The image to the right shows an example of a publicly-viewable entry in DataStore that originated from a permitted scientific study and that the park's research coordinator approved for public viewing. It is summarized at the top. The Reference Type is "Conference Proceeding Paper." In the table is an external link to the document itself -- a published abstract from a scientific conference held in Italy in 2012.



Do you have questions about the software? The RPRS HelpDesk is available. e-mail us