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Data and publishing

Data publication has been a new endeavor for me and was not addressed during my training in graduate school.  I have my first data publication out (Roberts et al. 2016) and have more in-progress.  Given my recent look into this, I thought it would be worth posting this topic to prompt further discussion within early career ecologist section.

In the big picture….

Data are central to everything we do.  Data are what our minds use to make conscious and unconscious judgements.  Data are what we see both anecdotally in observations and formally in numbers. Data are the official record of a study or monitoring effort.  Data are currency to advancing ecological science and application.

In reality…

Data are not cheap. Data generated from research studies and monitoring programs typically require literature reviews, plan writing, review & approval, personnel hiring & training, plot setup & demarcation, instrumentation calibration & deployment, data collection & processing, as well as project interpretation, summary & dissemination all of which include many hours, days, and weeks involving multiple people from multiple organizations.  In most cases, large amounts of money and time produce data that, at face value, are just a set of numbers and characters that represent something.

Data can mean something or nothing.  Knowledge discovery from scientific research and early warning from monitoring is often based on data.  Such advances are only possible when metadata (data documentation) are available.  Lacking metadata means the data simply are just numbers and characters that mean nothing.

Data publication is developing quickly in all industries.  In the ecological sciences, funding agencies and publishers are beginning to require data publication in order to receive funds or publish articles.  The data publication process requires data verification and standardization with accompanying metadata, making data accessible to other users.

(Source: Van den Eynden et al. 2009)

As a research scientist, here are my thoughts on publishing data:

• It forces accountability through data verification and metadata generation. It’s often easy to skip noting the details and nuances of a dataset. Plus, metadata ensures that re-purposed and re-used data are used properly.
• It credits the data generator(s); it’s a citable product. For scientists, you are recognized not only for the research articles from the data but also for the data product itself. Give credit to all your efforts!
• As an early career ecologist, published datasets are a great way place to support your new programs in science, application, or education. You can download, cite, and analyze data from anywhere to address scientific hypotheses, support management approaches, or demonstrate concepts.  No travel or weeks in the field needed!
• It’s value-added to advance ecological science and application. The data can be used in new, novel ways in different disciplines, with different analyses, or with other datasets beyond the data’s original purpose. It can go beyond what you can do.

I believe it’s my duty as a scientist to share the data I generate from research.  If you or your organization have not considered data publication, I highly recommend learning more and contributing to our global knowledge base!  I’ve learned about it through the Forest Service Research Data Archive (http://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/ ), Dryad (http://datadryad.org/ ) and other archiving sites in addition to chatting with experienced colleagues.  Please share your comments or experiences to help us learn more on this topic!

Cited literature:

 Roberts, M.W., D’Amato, A.W., Kern, C.C. and Palik, B.J. 2016 Data from: Long-term impacts of variable retention harvesting on ground-layer plant communities in Pinus resinosa forests. Dryad Data Repository.

Van den Eynden, V., Corti, L., Woollard, M. and Bishop, L. 2009 Research Life Cycle (Data). Managing and Sharing Data: A Best Practice Guide for Researchers.

Dr. Christel Kern is a research forester at the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station in Rhinelander, WI USA.  She is currently working with collaborative, interdisciplinary teams focused on management strategies for landscape restoration and global change adaptation. Outside of work, she enjoys playing inside and out with her family.