Until the early 1990s, terrestrial ecology data publication comprised primarily of graphs, tables, and figures included in published manuscripts. Data created during the process of research was often lost in the highly derived visual representations included in peer-reviewed literature. Furthermore, the data summarized in publications could not be readily extracted for further analysis, let alone be integrated with other data to address new research. Beginning in the early 2000s, research communities, funding agencies, and data users realized the need for sharing investigator-generated data.
A workflow for data ingest of research data has been developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC) that formalizes interactions with users, compiles information, data files, and metadata, and releases the product to the public. A new paper summarizes the goals and challenges of curating data produced by the terrestrial ecology community and describes this new workflow solution.
Learn more about the ORNL DAAC's Semi-Automated ingest System (SAuS) and read the full paper at the International Journal of Geo-Information.
