UC3
The Skinny on Data Publication
The concept of data publication is rather simple in theory: rather than relying on journal articles alone for scholarly communication, let’s publish data sets as “first class citizens” (hat tip to the DataCite group). Data sets have inherent value that makes them standalone scholarly objects— they are more likely to be discovered by researchers in […]
Scientific Data at the AGU Meeting
This past week, 20,000 Earth scientists gathered in San Francisco for the American Geophysical Union’s Fall 2011 Meeting. Like most conference attendees, I had grand plans of attending the conference all week, filling my head with geophysical knowledge and talking to scientists about their use of Excel. The week didn’t quite work out as planned, but […]
Drumroll please… Excel add-in features we are proposing
Just in time for the holidays (and the AGU Fall 2011 Meeting)- a list of the overarching requirements we are working on for the Excel add-in project! After talking with about 150 scientists about their Excel use and their data management/archiving practices, we think we have narrowed down the giant list of potential Excel improvements […]
What Ben Franklin Thinks about Spreadsheets
Over the last couple of months I have seen a lot of scientists’ Excel spreadsheets. Approximately 150 spreadsheets, to be exact. All of this important information will feed into the requirements that I send off to the developers for the DCXL add-in, but in the mean time I am collating some very interesting information about […]
A Few of My Favorite Things
It’s American Thanksgiving this week, and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic and wistful. In honor of this occasion, I thought I would list a few of my favorite data-related websites, blogs, and services. Cue Maria and the von Trapps! Or John Coltrane, if you prefer. FlowingData. This is an incredible website full of interesting ideas […]
More Excel Tips and Tricks
A few weeks back I posted some nifty Excel functions that you might not have been aware of. I’m certainly no expert in Excel, but I have heard lots of scientists tell me “I wish Excel would… [fill in the blank]“, when in fact Excel already has that capability. So here’s a few more Excel […]
Data Hangover Part II: Going Retro
In the previous post, I covered some basic steps for preventing Data Hangover, however all of my suggestions pertained to actions you can take prior to data collection. What if the project is already well underway? How does one conduct retroactive data management? This is a much more complicated and tricky question, and the answer […]
Data Hangover
What happened? This is a common question among co-eds, Mardi Gras celebrants, and many scientists. I’m not referring to alcohol-soaked evenings at conferences, but instead to the question that inevitably results from poor data management. What happened? How did I get here? It might seem a bit trite to pose poor data management as a […]
Love at First Cite
Data citation. This is a phrase you are likely to hear a lot in the next few years. The idea is simple enough: cite a data set, just like you would a journal article. Note: much of the content from this article was borrowed from Robert Cook of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the DataCite website. […]
Clearing Up the Cloud of Confusion
The Cloud. You have probably been hearing this phrase thrown around quite a bit lately. It reminds me of something straight out of Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, but in this case Big Brother might be your friend. If you are like I was about six months ago, you might be saying “What exactly IS The […]