Challenges and Opportunities of Open Data in Ecology

Abstract

Ecology is a synthetic discipline benefiting from open access to data from the earth, life, and social sciences. Technological challenges exist, however, due to the dispersed and heterogeneous nature of these data. Standardization of methods and development of robust metadata can increase data access but are not sufficient. Reproducibility of analyses is also important, and executable workflows are addressing this issue by capturing data provenance. Sociological challenges, including inadequate rewards for sharing data, must also be resolved. The establishment of well-curated, federated data repositories will provide a means to preserve data while promoting attribution and acknowledgement of its use.

Our path to better science in less time using open data science tools

“…There is ongoing and important work by the informatics com munity on the architecture and systems for data management and archiving 7,8,18,74 , as well as efforts to enable scientists to publish the code that they do have 26,31,52 . This work is critical, but comes with the a priori assumption that scientists are already thinking about data and coding in a way that they would seek out further resources.…”

“…Ecologists and environmental scientists arguably have a height ened responsibility for transparency and openness, as data products provide important snapshots of systems that may be forever altered due to climate change and other human pressures 16,18 . There is par ticular urgency for efficiency and transparency, as well as opportu nity to democratize science in fields that operate at the interface of science and policy.…”

“…Our story is only one potential path because there are many ways to upgrade scientific practiceswhether collaborating only with your 'future self ' or as a team-and they depend on the shared commitment of individuals, institutions and publishers 6,16,17 . We do not review the important, ongoing work regarding data management architecture and archiving 8,18 , work flows 11,[19][20][21] , sharing and publishing data [22][23][24][25] and code [25][26][27] , or how to tackle reproducibility and openness in science [28][29][30][31][32] . Instead, we focus on our experience, because it required changing the way we had always worked, which was extraordinarily intimidating.…”

Open Environmental Data in Developing Countries: Who Benefits?

“…Benefits of open data strategies have been broadly discussed (e.g. Reichman et al 2011). A common argument is that data obtained using public money should be used in a way to maximize the benefits for the general public.…”

Ecoinformatics: supporting ecology as a data-intensive science

“…In particular, scientists, professional societies and research sponsors are recognizing the value of data as a product of the scientific enterprise and placing increased emphasis on data stewardship, data sharing, openness and supporting study repeatability [15][16][17].…”