Improved FAIR Data Publication Quality in Specialized Environmental Data Portals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ionut Iosifescu Enescu ◽  
Gian-Kasper Plattner ◽  
Lucia Espona Pernas ◽  
Dominik Haas-Artho ◽  
Rebecca Buchholz
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Information ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Data Publishing ◽  
Data Provenance ◽  
Publication Process ◽  
Data Publication ◽  
Metadata Record

<p>Environmental research data from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, an Institute of the ETH Domain, is published through the environmental data portal EnviDat (https://www.envidat.ch). EnviDat actively implements the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles and offers guidance and support to researchers throughout the research data publication process.</p><p>WSL strives to increase the fraction of environmental data easily available for reuse in the public domain. At the same time, WSL facilitates the publication of high-quality environmental research datasets by providing an appropriate infrastructure, a formal publication process and by assigning Document Object Identifiers (DOIs) and appropriate citation information.</p><p>Within EnviDat, we conceptualize and implement data publishing workflows that include automatic validation, interactive quality checks, and iterative improvement of metadata quality. The data publication workflow encompasses a number of steps, starting from the request for a DOI, to an approval process with a double-checking principle, and the submission of the metadata-record to DataCite for the final data publication. This workflow can be viewed as a decentralized peer-review and quality improvement process for safeguarding the quality of published environmental datasets. The workflow is being further developed and refined together with partner institutions within the ETH Domain.</p><p>We have defined and implemented additional features in EnviDat, such as (i) in-depth tracing of data provenance through related datasets; (ii) the ability to augment published research data with additional resources which support open science such as model codes and software; and (iii) a DataCRediT mechanism designed for specifying data authorship (Collection, Validation, Curation, Software, Publication, Supervision).</p><p>We foresee that these developments will help to further improve approaches targeted at modern documentation and exchange of scientific information. This is timely given the increasing expectations that institutions and researchers have towards capabilities of research data portals and repositories in the environmental domain.</p>

scholarly journals Connecting Data Publication to the Research Workflow: A Preliminary Analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sünje Dallmeier-Tiessen ◽  
Varsha Khodiyar ◽  
Fiona Murphy ◽  
Amy Nurnberger ◽  
Lisa Raymond ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Group ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Data Publishing ◽  
Data Repository ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Data Publication ◽  
Loosely Coupled ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Data Documentation

The data curation community has long encouraged researchers to document collected research data during active stages of the research workflow, to provide robust metadata earlier, and support research data publication and preservation. Data documentation with robust metadata is one of a number of steps in effective data publication. Data publication is the process of making digital research objects ‘FAIR’, i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable; attributes increasingly expected by research communities, funders and society. Research data publishing workflows are the means to that end. Currently, however, much published research data remains inconsistently and inadequately documented by researchers. Documentation of data closer in time to data collection would help mitigate the high cost that repositories associate with the ingest process. More effective data publication and sharing should in principle result from early interactions between researchers and their selected data repository. This paper describes a short study undertaken by members of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and World Data System (WDS) working group on Publishing Data Workflows. We present a collection of recent examples of data publication workflows that connect data repositories and publishing platforms with research activity ‘upstream’ of the ingest process. We re-articulate previous recommendations of the working group, to account for the varied upstream service components and platforms that support the flow of contextual and provenance information downstream. These workflows should be open and loosely coupled to support interoperability, including with preservation and publication environments. Our recommendations aim to stimulate further work on researchers’ views of data publishing and the extent to which available services and infrastructure facilitate the publication of FAIR data. We also aim to stimulate further dialogue about, and definition of, the roles and responsibilities of research data services and platform providers for the ‘FAIRness’ of research data publication workflows themselves.

Towards a Specialized Environmental Data Portal: Challenges and Opportunities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ionut Iosifescu-Enescu ◽  
Gian-Kasper Plattner ◽  
Dominik Haas-Artho ◽  
David Hanimann ◽  
Konrad Steffen
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Research Data Management ◽  
Environmental Domain ◽  
Federal Institute ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Data Portal

<p>EnviDat – www.envidat.ch – is the institutional Environmental Data portal of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL. Launched in 2012 as a small project to explore possible solutions for a generic WSL-wide data portal, it has since evolved into a strategic initiative at the institutional level tackling issues in the broad areas of Open Research Data and Research Data Management. EnviDat demonstrates our commitment to accessible research data in order to advance environmental science.</p><p>EnviDat actively implements the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles. Core EnviDat research data management services include the registration, integration and hosting of quality-controlled, publication-ready data from a wide range of terrestrial environmental systems, in order to provide unified access to WSL’s environmental monitoring and research data. The registration of research data in EnviDat results in the formal publication with permanent identifiers (EnviDat own PIDs as well as DOIs) and the assignment of appropriate citation information.</p><p>Innovative EnviDat features that contribute to the global system of modern documentation and exchange of scientific information include: (i) a DataCRediT mechanism designed for specifying data authorship (Collection, Validation, Curation, Software, Publication, Supervision), (ii) the ability to enhance published research data with additional resources, such as model codes and software, (iii) in-depth documentation of data provenance, e.g., through a dataset description as well as related publications and datasets, (iv) unambiguous and persistent identifiers for authors (ORCIDs) and, in the medium-term, (v) a decentralized “peer-review” data publication process for safeguarding the quality of available datasets in EnviDat.</p><p>More recently, the EnviDat development has been moving beyond the set of core features expected from a research data management portal with a built-in publishing repository. This evolution is driven by the diverse set of researchers’ requirements for a specialized environmental data portal that formally cuts across the five WSL research themes forest, landscape, biodiversity, natural hazards, and snow and ice, and that concerns all research units and central IT services.</p><p>Examples of such recent requirements for EnviDat include: (i) immediate access to data collected by automatic measurements stations, (ii) metadata and data visualization on charts and maps, with geoservices for large geodatasets, and (iii) progress towards linked open data (LOD) with curated vocabularies and semantics for the environmental domain.</p><p>There are many challenges associated with the developments mentioned above. However, they also represent opportunities for further improving the exchange of scientific information in the environmental domain. Especially geospatial technologies have the potential to become a central element for any specialized environmental data portal, triggering the convergence between publishing repositories and geoportals. Ultimately, these new requirements demonstrate the raised expectations that institutions and researchers have towards the future capabilities of research data portals and repositories in the environmental domain. With EnviDat, we are ready to take up these challenges over the years to come.</p>

scholarly journals OPEN SCIENCE, KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND REPRODUCIBILITY AS DRIVERS FOR THE ADOPTION OF FOSS4G IN ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH

2019 ◽  
Vol XLII-4/W14 ◽  
pp. 107-110
Author(s):  
I. Iosifescu Enescu ◽  
G-K. Plattner ◽  
L. Bont ◽  
M. Fraefel ◽  
R. Meile ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Open Source Software ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Data Repository ◽  
User Requirement ◽  
Data Portal

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Support for open science is a highly relevant user requirement for the environmental data portal EnviDat. EnviDat, the institutional data portal and publication data repository of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, actively implements the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) principles and provides a range of services in the area of research data management. Open science, with its requirements for improved knowledge sharing and reproducibility, is driving the adoption of free and open source software for geospatial (FOSS4G) in academic research. Open source software can play a key role in the proper documentation of data sets, processes and methodologies, because it supports the transparency of methods and the precise documentation of all steps needed to achieve the published results. EnviDat actively supports these activities to enhance its support for open science. With EnviDat, WSL contributes to the ongoing cultural evolution in research towards open science and opportunities for distant collaboration.</p>

Advancing the FAIRness and Openness of Earth system science in Europe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Petzold ◽  
Ari Asmi ◽  
Katrin Seemeyer ◽  
Angeliki Adamaki ◽  
Alex Vermeulen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Science ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Use Cases ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Earth System ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
Horizon 2020 ◽  
Observing Systems

&lt;p&gt;Focused environmental research projects and continuously operating research infrastructures (RIs) designed for monitoring all subdomains of the Earth system contribute to global observing systems and serve as crucial information sources for environmental scientists in their quest for understanding and interpreting the complex Earth System and contribute to global observing systems. The EU funded ENVRI-FAIR project [1] builds on the Environmental Research Infrastructure (ENVRI) community that includes principal European producers and providers of environmental research data and services.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;ENVRI-FAIR targets the development and implementation of both technical frameworks and policy solutions that make subdomain boundaries irrelevant for environmental scientists and prepare Earth system science for the new Open Science paradigm. Cross-discipline harmonization and standardization activities, together with the implementation of joint data management and access structures at the RI level, facilitate the strategic coordination of observation systems required for truly interdisciplinary science. ENVRI-FAIR will ultimately create the open access ENVRI-Hub delivering environmental data and services provided by the contributing environmental RIs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The architecture and functionalities of the ENVRI-Hub are driven by the applications, use cases and user needs, and will be based on three main pillars: (1) the ENVRI Knowledge Base as the human interface to the ENVRI ecosystem; (2) the ENVRI Catalogue as the machine-actionable interface to the ENVRI ecosystem; and (3) subdomain and cross-domain use cases as demonstrators for the capabilities of service provision among ENVRIs and across Science Clusters. The architecture is designed in anticipation of interoperation with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and is intended to act as a key platform for users and developers planning to include ENVRI services in their workflows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ENVRI community objectives of sharing FAIRness experience, technologies and training as well as research products and services will be realized by means of the ENVRI-Hub. The architecture, design features, technology developments and associated policies will highlight this example of how ENVRI-FAIR is promoting FAIRness, openness and multidisciplinarity of an entire scientific area by joint developments and implementation efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acknowledgment: ENVRI-FAIR has received funding from the European Union&amp;#8217;s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824068.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] Petzold, A., Asmi, A., Vermeulen, A., Pappalardo, G., Bailo, D., Schaap, D., Glaves, H. M., Bundke, U., and Zhao, Z.: ENVRI-FAIR - Interoperable environmental FAIR data and services for society, innovation and research, 15th IEEE International Conference on eScience 2019, 1-4, doi: http://doi.org/10.1109/eScience.2019.00038, 2019.&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Fostering Open Science at WSL with the EnviDat Environmental Data Portal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ionut Iosifescu Enescu ◽  
Marielle Fraefel ◽  
Gian-Kasper Plattner ◽  
Lucia Espona-Pernas ◽  
Dominik Haas-Artho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Federal Institute ◽  
Data Policy ◽  
Data Portal

EnviDat is the institutional research data portal of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape WSL. The portal is designed to provide solutions for efficient, unified and managed access to the WSL’s comprehensive reservoir of monitoring and research data, in accordance with the WSL data policy. Through EnviDat, WSL is fostering open science, making curated, quality-controlled, publication-ready research data accessible. Data producers can document author contributions for a particular data set through the EnviDat-DataCRediT taxonomy. The publication of research data sets can be complemented with additional digital resources, such as, e.g., supplementary documentation, processing software or detailed descriptions of code (i.e. as Jupyter Notebooks). The EnviDat Team is working towards generic solutions for enhancing open science, in line with WSL’s commitment to accessible research data.

Building the Foundations for Open Applied Earth System Science in ENVRI-FAIR

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Asmi ◽  
Daniela Franz ◽  
Andreas Petzold
Keyword(s):  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Earth System ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Earth System Science ◽  
System Science ◽  
Access Structures ◽  
Eu Project

&lt;p&gt;The EU project ENVRI-FAIR builds on the Environmental Research Infrastructure (ENVRI) community that includes principal European producers and providers of environmental research data and research services. The ENVRI community integrates the four subdomains of the Earth system - Atmosphere, Ocean, Solid Earth, and Biodiversity/Terrestrial Ecosystems. The environmental research infrastructures (RI) contributing to ENVRI-FAIR have developed comprehensive expertise in their fields of research, but their integration across the boundaries of applied subdomain science is still not fully developed. However, this integration is critical for improving our current understanding of the major challenges to our planet such as climate change and its impacts on the whole Earth system, our ability to respond and predict natural hazards, and our understanding and preventing of ecosystem loss.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;ENVRI-FAIR targets the development and implementation of the technical framework and policy solutions to make subdomain boundaries irrelevant for environmental scientists, and prepare Earth system science for the new paradigm of Open Science. Harmonization and standardization activities across disciplines together with the implementation of joint data management and access structures at RI level facilitate the strategic coordination of observation systems required for truly interdisciplinary science. ENVRI-FAIR will finally create an open access hub for environmental data and services provided by the contributing environmental RIs, utilizing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) as Europe&amp;#180;s answer to the transition to Open Science.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Open Science, Excellent Science! EC policies and initiatives in support of open science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Tsoukala
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Open Access Publishing ◽  
Access Policy ◽  
Recent Policy

Watch the VIDEO.Victoria will focus on discussing  existing EC policies and recent policy developments designed to support open science across Europe. She will present the current open access policy and the plans of the Commission for open science in Horizon Europe, the revised Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information and research data in the proposed revision of the PSI directive. She will discuss Plan S and its possible implementation in the context of the current and future FP requirements, the initiative of the EC for an open access publishing platform and the launch of the European Open Science Cloud.

Hack the Arctic: transforming data into solutions as a community  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephany Buenrostro Mazon ◽  
Magdalena Brus ◽  
Katri Ahlgren ◽  
Alexander Mahura ◽  
Hanna K. Lappalainen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Data ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Observation System ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
System Research ◽  
Government Sector ◽  
International Projects

&lt;p&gt;A recurring question among research projects is how to optimize the use data that already exists and to identify its stakeholder&amp;#8217;s needs, particularly in effort to bring services to a wider community outside academia. We propose a hackathon to allow the collaboration between civil, educational, business and governmental actors to address environmental challenges with the use of environment scientific data from international projects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hack the Arctic is co-organized by the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR)/University of Helsinki, the Integrated Carbon Observation System Research Infrastructure (ICOS-ERIC) Headoffice, and the Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) Community. The hackathon event aims to enhance the usage and impact of environmental research data by and for society. The 48 hr event will gather multi-disciplinary teams through a public call to make use of existing environmental data from a network of research projects to develop services addressing the needs of different end-users. The participating teams will be mentored by researchers and data scientist in the use of the data. A panel of judges comprising of science mentors, innovation specialists and government sector actors will assess the implementation of the final pilot products at the end of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We present Hack the Arctic as an up-and-coming alternative to expand the usage and visibility of research data and to make it widely accessible to a broader (nonacademic) audience by offering mentorship from data and scientific experts under one roof.&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Fostering Open Science at WSL with the EnviDat Environmental Data Portal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ionut Iosifescu Enescu ◽  
Marielle Fraefel ◽  
Gian-Kasper Plattner ◽  
Lucia Espona-Pernas ◽  
Dominik Haas-Artho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Open Science ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Institutional Research ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Digital Resources ◽  
Federal Institute ◽  
Data Policy ◽  
Data Portal

EnviDat is the institutional research data portal of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape WSL. The portal is designed to provide solutions for efficient, unified and managed access to the WSL’s comprehensive reservoir of monitoring and research data, in accordance with the WSL data policy. Through EnviDat, WSL is fostering open science, making curated, quality-controlled, publication-ready research data accessible. Data producers can document author contributions for a particular data set through the EnviDat-DataCRediT taxonomy. The publication of research data sets can be complemented with additional digital resources, such as, e.g., supplementary documentation, processing software or detailed descriptions of code (i.e. as Jupyter Notebooks). The EnviDat Team is working towards generic solutions for enhancing open science, in line with WSL’s commitment to accessible research data.

scholarly journals Open Research Data and Open Peer Review: Perceptions of a Medical and Health Sciences Community in Greece

Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Eirini Delikoura ◽  
Dimitrios Kouis
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Health Sciences ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Open Research ◽  
Proper Training ◽  
To Receive

Recently significant initiatives have been launched for the dissemination of Open Access as part of the Open Science movement. Nevertheless, two other major pillars of Open Science such as Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Peer Review (OPR) are still in an early stage of development among the communities of researchers and stakeholders. The present study sought to unveil the perceptions of a medical and health sciences community about these issues. Through the investigation of researchers` attitudes, valuable conclusions can be drawn, especially in the field of medicine and health sciences, where an explosive growth of scientific publishing exists. A quantitative survey was conducted based on a structured questionnaire, with 179 valid responses. The participants in the survey agreed with the Open Peer Review principles. However, they ignored basic terms like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and appeared incentivized to permit the exploitation of their data. Regarding Open Peer Review (OPR), participants expressed their agreement, implying their support for a trustworthy evaluation system. Conclusively, researchers need to receive proper training for both Open Research Data principles and Open Peer Review processes which combined with a reformed evaluation system will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise from the new scholarly publishing and communication landscape.

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