International Perspectives and New Developments in Antarctic

Data Management

Taco de BruinActing Chief Officer SCADM

8th Symposium on Polar Studies, Palma de Mallorca, Sep. 7-9, 2011

Santiago Ramón y Cajal(Spanish Nobel Prize winner, 1906)

“A scholar’s positive contribution is measured by the sum of the original data that he contributes.

Hypotheses come and go, but data remain.”

Data Management

Do data really remain?

Only if carefully and professionally managed

What is data management?

All activities concerning data to maximize the value

of data by preserving data for future (re-)use.

The primary objective of data management is to ensure

timely, efficient and open access to the best possible

data, metadata and associated products, for use and

re-use throughout their life-cycle and to prevent loss

of data and associated information

POGO – Partnership for Observing the Global Ocean

Data Management

Why would you want to manage the data?

Value of the data

- to your research work

- to society

Data are NOT your personal property

Public money = Public good

Data Management

What activities are part of good data management?

- Securing and archiving both raw and processed data

- Ensuring complete metadata, so that future generations of

scientists will be able to use the data

- Making the data available and accessible

- Showing the world the existence of the data

This is all done by professional data centres

Data Management

What are the benefits (for you) of sharing data through a professional data centre?

Secure Archiving

“The data centre preserves the data for eternity”

Dr. Øystein Godøy, Norwegian Meteorological Institute

New collaborations

New use (= new life) of the data (in unexpected applications)

Furthers interdisciplinary research

Increases recognition for work done

Independent verification of research results: better science

Reduces workload (handling data requests for you)

Data Management

What developments can be discerned?

Free, unrestricted and timely exchange of dataFree = no money paid, unrestricted = no conditions

on use of the data, timely = asap

Increasingly stricter requirements by funding agencies

and research organizations and programmes

International Perspectives and New Developments

What developments can be discerned?

Fair attribution: acknowledgement of the work done

by the data provider (= the scientist)

Data citation

Data sets can be published and cited

International Perspectives and New Developments

International Perspectives and New Developments

http://earth-system-science-data.net/

http://www.iode.org/index.php?option=com_oe&task=viewEventDocs&eventID=625

What developments can be discerned?

Fair attribution: acknowledgement of the work done

by the data provider (= the scientist)

Data citation

Important role and responsibility for funding agencies

to develop a system for giving as much credit to a data

citation as to a journal citation

International Perspectives and New Developments

What does SCAR do?

SCAR Data Policy

National Antarctic Data Centres (NADC)

Standing Committee on Antarctic Data

Management (SCADM)

Antarctic Data Management System (ADMS)

Antarctic Master Directory

National (NADC) Portals

Antarctic Data Management

Antarctic Data Management

Antarctic Data Management

Datasets may

range from a

few, but unique,

measurements

to Terabytes of

data

Antarctic Data Management

4159 out of

7699 lead

directly to

(online) data

Antarctic Data Management

Antarctic Data Management

Antarctic Data Management

Datasets may

range from a

few, but unique,

measurements

to Terabytes of

data

Antarctic Data Management

Antarctic Data Management

Next presentation:

Polar Data Management in Spain

Oscar Bermudez