A few months ago, the UC3 group was contacted by some individuals interested in solving a problem: how should we reference field stations? Rob Plowes from University of Texas/Brackenridge Field Lab emailed us:
I am on a [National Academy of Sciences] panel reviewing aspects of field stations, and we have been discussing a need for data archiving. One idea proposed is for each field station to generate a simple document with a DOI reference to enable use in publications that make reference to the field station. Having this DOI document would enable a standardized citation that could be tracked by an online data aggregator.
We thought this was a great idea and started having a few conversations with other groups (LTER, NEON, etc.) about its feasibility. Fast forward to two weeks ago, when Plowes and Becca Fenwick of UC Merced presented our more fleshed out idea to the OBFS/NAML Joint Meeting in Woods Hole, MA. (OBFS: Organization of Biological Field Stations, and NAML: National Association of Marine Laboratories). The response was overwhelmingly positive, so we are proceeding with the idea in earnest here at the CDL.
The intent of this blog post is to gather feedback from the broader community about our idea, including our proposed metadata fields, our plans for implementation, and whether there are existing initiatives or groups that we should be aware of and/or partner with moving forward.
In a Nutshell
Problem: Tracking publications associated with a field station or site is difficult. There is no clear or standard way to cite field station descriptions.
Proposal: Create individual, citable “publications” with associated persistent identifiers for each field station (more generically called a “site”). Collect these Site Descriptors in the general use DataONE repository, ONEShare. The user interface will be a new instance of the existing UC3 Dash service (under development) with some modifications for Site Descriptors.
What we need from you:
- Review our proposal (Google doc)
- Review our list of proposed metadata fields (Google spreadsheet).
- Tell us what you think! Please add comments to these documents or email us with your thoughts.
Moving forward: We plan on gathering community feedback for the next few months, with an eye towards completing a pilot version of the interface by February 2015. We will be ramping up Dash development over the next 12 months thanks to recent funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and this development work will include creating a more robust version of the Site Descriptors database.
Project Partners:
- Rob Plowes, UT Austin/Brackenridge Field Lab
- Mark Stromberg, UC Berkeley/UC Natural Reserve System
- Kevin Browne, UC Natural Reserve System Information Manager
- Becca Fenwick, UC Merced
- UC3 group
- DataONE organization
