Cruise Summary Reports (CSR = former ROSCOPs) are the usual means in SeaDataNet for reporting on cruises or field experiments at sea. Traditionally, it is the Chief Scientist's obligation to submit a CSR to his/her National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) not later than two weeks after the cruise. This provides a first level inventory of measurements and samples collected at sea. Information such as the ship track, objectives of the cruise and principal investigators contacts are also included among other metadata elements tested to be useful in the marine community practice.
Currently, the Cruise Summary Reports directory covers cruises from 1873 till today from more than 2.000 research vessels: a total of nearly 58.000 cruises, in all European waters and global oceans. This also includes historic CSRs from European countries that have been loaded from the ICES database from 1960 onwards.