Facility Use Policy

The Archbold Center has catered to a wide variety of research activities since 2005 and over time these policies have been developed for our mutual benefit and efficient program management. If you have any further questions regarding the policies of the Archbold Center please contact our managing director. It is important that you fully understand and comply with Archbold policies for a successful program at our facility.

Listed below are a number of policies that apply to different fields of study. Please email us any inquiries about your ideas or questions in regards to specific policies.

Faculty Use Permission

Permission to Use the Archbold Center Facilities:
Regardless of the type of activity you hope to accomplish, you must first apply to the Archbold Center by writing to the Managing Director, briefly describing your proposed activity so that we can assist you with obtaining permission from the Dominican Government.

The Archbold Center’s approval of your project does not supersede permission from the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica.

Archbold Center Facility Use Requirements:

Researchers will secure the permission from the appropriate Government of Dominica authority for teaching, research, collecting and exporting. Failure to do so will result in denial of residency or use of facilities at the Archbold Center.
All researchers are personally liable under local law for any misrepresentation or illegal collecting or exporting or any unethical or illegal behavior.
The Archbold Center reserves the right to refuse facility access and /or withdraw support for any initiative which it feels may undermine its relationship with the Dominican authorities, Dominican community, donor agencies or academic community.
The burdens of proof and of timely application are on the applicant. The Archbold Center will take no responsibility for delays caused by late application or incomplete documentation.

Information Database Policy

We do our best to maintain a database of information on all research projects carried out by people who stay at the Center. The objective is to create a secure archive of specifically Dominican information and data sets. This archive is intended for public access but an on-line database has not yet been created. The collection is critical to enhance the value of the center as a research site and national resource.

We recognize the interest of researchers in controlling the use of data that they have collected. At the same time, institutional and societal commitments substantiate an obligation to ensure the eventual accessibility of the data.

For the stated reasons, the Archbold Center implements the following data archival policy to guarantee the long-term availability of information and their protection from unauthorized use:

A research proposal is required before initiating work at or from the center and an interim report must be submitted to the local authority and to our office at the end of each stay. Researchers may also be required to submit fully documented data sets in cases where the project involves data of broad utility or special interest to the Archbold Center or to the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica (e.g., information on rare or endangered species.)
The Archbold Center will safeguard data as necessary from release to persons not specifically authorized by the investigator for a period of three years after the data are deposited. This protection can be renewed every year upon written request of the investigator. The data will be made generally available in the absence of such a written request or in the event of an investigator’s death.