Editorial: Data publication – ESSD goals, practices and recommendations

Earth System Science Data (ESSD) provides a wide range of openly accessible, high-quality, well-documented and highly useful data products while ensuring recognition of and credit to data providers. As authors, reviewers, and editors of many ESSD publications, we encounter uncertainty about mechanisms and requirements for open access, about what constitutes a published data product, and about how one goes about submitting, evaluating or using ESSD products. With this short note, published during an important editorial transition, we use our combined experience to define guidelines, requirements and benefits of the ESSD processes.