Processes

Setting Up a Subscription Contract

The contract-review and procurement processes differ by institution.

1. To request a subscription contract, complete the subscription request form.
2. Within eight to ten business days, the Kilts Center will contact the contract administrator to review and execute the contract.
3. Upon execution of the contract, the contract administrator receives an invoice. Acceptable forms of payment include ACH, wire transfer, or check. Credit card payments are not accepted.
4. Upon receipt of fees, the Kilts Center activates the subscription and sends details about eligibility, policies, and steps for how each individual researcher can register to access the data.
5. Via an online portal, a named contract administrator is responsible for approving individual researcher registration requests.

Individual Registration Process

Via an online portal, each individual researcher must register themselves by providing contact information and detailed summaries of all projects that will include data from the Kilts Center.

1. The Kilts Data Center reviews each researcher registration to ensure they and their projects meet all requirements.
2. Per data provider policies, projects that involve funding from sources external to a researchers’ institution require review and approval by the data provider(s). Note that not all externally-funded projects are guaranteed approval.
3. Once the Kilts Center approves a registration, the researcher will receives an email outlining steps for how to retrieve data and relevant reference files. 
4. As part of the registration process, researchers must review all terms and conditions and promise to adhere to data provider policies.
5. Every researcher must submit annual project status updates.
6. When a subscription ends or an individual leaves their institution, the data provider requires that the researcher destroy all copies of the data and deactivate their Kilts Center account.

Data Delivery

Historical years of data (with up to a two-year lag) are available to researchers immediately. The Kilts Center releases annual data updates during the first quarter of each calendar year (timing subject to change) and notifies all registered researchers via email.

1. Once registered and approved, researchers use the Kilts Apply portal to access all years of data through a secure online file transfer system called Globus.
2. From Globus, researchers download the data to an institutionally-owned device or approved location for storage and use.
3. Consumer Panel, Retail Scanner, and Ad Intel datasets come as TAR files that researchers must decompress and unzip. Once they complete these steps, they will have a set of TSV (tab-separated values) files.
4. Consumer Panel Data are available by year and approximately 10GB zipped per year of data (varies by year).
5. The Retail Scanner Data are approximately .7TB zipped per year (varies by year). Researchers will use an online application to request custom-built file packages of data files that include those required for a project. The sizes of the custom-built data packages vary based on the request.
6. Ad Intel Data are available by year and are approximately 96GB zipped per year (varies by year).
7. Custom Panel View surveys are small (~60MB each). Ailments, Health, and Wellness survey data file sizes vary by year, ranging from 100-200MB. Data for these surveys come as .TSV files.