Regarding data access and data security, every record at MWADC is assigned a data access level and is governed by a data sharing policy. The data owner (the person or institution contributing the dataset) determines the access level and provides the data sharing policy. That is, the data owner is in full control of how the data are discovered, viewed, and shared.
Data are contributed to MWADC by registering for a MyMWADC account. In order to maintain the distributed structure and sharing of data among nodes, the AKN has developed a standardized data format to transfer the data. This data structure is called the Bird Monitoring Data Exchange (BMDE) schema. The BMDE also serves as a description standard, so that all important bird monitoring data concepts are defined in the BMDE.
