NERC allows researchers it funds to protect their research by granting a reasonable amount of time to work‐up their data sets and publish their findings. This is known as an embargo period.  In most cases, a reasonable embargo period is a maximum of two years from the end of data collection.

What this means in practice is that if you want to access certain datasets, you may have to wait until the embargo period has expired before you can access the data. It may, however, be possible to negotiate an earlier release.

See the NERC Data Policy for more information.