Providing support
- Answering requests for data
- Providing training opportunities
- On the job training in good data collection and managements practice

Saving Time
- The data will be integrated with the authoritative metadata without personal effort

Providing security
- Providing security against data loss
- Backing up PI’s data at an early stage
- Preserving data ultimately for posterity (The World Data Centres have the resources to preserve data for the long term and periodically to update the media on which data are held)
- Data will be professionally maintained, safeguarded and archived
- Serving as long-term archive

Enhancing Data Quality and Control
- Helping with calibration and validation
- Expert Data Centres will quality control data and may help the originator in detecting problems. Comparison with the data sets of other PIs is one sure way to tease out errors and inconsistencies. Access to related data will aid in linking of individual data sets and promoting scientific collaboration.

Gaining Recognition
- Protection of intellectual effort
- Providing PI recognition for data submissions (ex: to assign persistent identifier for data and a venue for publishing the data so the data can be cited like a scientific paper. SCOR and IODE are working on this, see http://www.iode.org/datapublishing).

Being involved in an international network
- The IMBER IPO has initiated a metadata portal http://gcmd.nasa.gov/portals/imber/ for IMBER-related field projects. Through this facility, researchers in the IMBER community can identify useful projects that have taken place and obtain information and data from them.