Vorarbeiten zur Erstellung eines Konzepts zur Sicherung von Biodiversitätsdaten: Analyse bestehender Initiativen und Eruierung der Motivations- und Akzeptanzfragen
Final Report Abstract
Data sharing has become an important issue in modern biodiversity research to address large scale questions. Despite the steadily growing scientific demand, data are not easily accessed. These studies investigate the demands and optimization possibilities for technical infrastructures of long-term biodiversity data storage and re-use (WP1) and explore the reasons for the reluctance to share data on the one hand and the motivations for sharing on the other (WP2). Both work packages used interviews and online surveys as method to achieve this goal. Our analysis provided insight into the formal and technical structures needed for data sharing and reuse, which includes structures to allow for data publication and collaborative networking. For ease of data re-use standards are necessary which also can serve as quality filters. New approaches like ontologies are intensively discussed among database architects to better satisfy user requirements and to improve the interoperability of biodiversity applications. Our survey among researchers revealed a huge acceptance concerning sharing of biodiversity research data. However, scientists also do struggle with a mixture of social and technical impediments, e.g. loss of control over data and lack of professional reward for sharing. To ensure sustainable data use, user friendly data infrastructures have to be expanded or newly designed, data management plans for all scientific investigations have to be promoted, training for the users has to be provided and motivational aspects have to considered at all stages of data submission and re-use. Based on these results a simplified structure chart of a future national biodiversity data center has been proposed, which includes key requirements and prerequisites for the user’s acceptance and some suggestions for best-practice solutions regarding future technological developments. Most existing biodiversity repositories in Germany consent to contribute to a national biodiversity data center when data ownership is organized and financing is ensured. The results of this project are published or submitted to be published and the here generated primary data is online accessible at http://www.tropicalmountainforest.org/. In addition to only an originally intended German survey contacts to a NSF-project (DataOne) led to an enlargement of WP2 to a global survey.
Publications
- (2011): A comparative evaluation on technical solutions of long-term data repositories for integrative biodiversity research. Ecological Informatics
Bach, K. Schäfer, D. Enke, N. Seeger, B, Gemeinholzer, B. & J. Bendix
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2011.11.008)
