Statement of Commitment from Earth and Space Science Publishers and Data Facilities:

This is an important committment from the CODATA and earth science community. Looking quite forward to circulating a similar document from the Neuroscience community.

 

Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences

 
Earth and space science data are special resources, critical for advancing science and
addressing societal challenges – from assessing and responding to natural hazards and
climate change, to use of energy and natural resources, to managing our oceans, air, and
land. The need for and value of open data have been encoded in major Earth and space
science society position statements, foundation initiatives, and more recently in
statements and directives from governments and funding agencies in the United States,
United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and elsewhere. This statement of
commitment signals important progress and a continuing commitment by publishers and
data facilities to enable open data in the Earth and space sciences.
 

Scholarly publication is a key high­value entry point in making data available, open,
discoverable, and usable. Most publishers have statements related to the inclusion or
release of data as part of publication, recognizing that inclusion of the full data enhances
the value and is part of the integrity of the research. Unfortunately, the vast majority of
data submitted along with publications are in formats and forms of storage that makes
discovery and reuse difficult or impossible.
 

Repositories, facilities, and consortia dedicated to the collection, curation, storage, and
distribution of scientific data have become increasingly central to the scientific enterprise.
The leading Earth and space science repositories not only provide persistent homes for
these data, but also ensure quality and enhance their value, access, and reuse. In addition
to data, these facilities attend to the associated models and tools. Unfortunately, only a
small fraction of the data, tools, and models associated with scientific publications makes
it to these data facilities.
 

Connecting scholarly publication more firmly with data facilities thus has many
advantages for science in the 21st century and is essential in meeting the aspirations of
open, available, and useful data envisioned in the position statements and funder
guidelines. To strengthen these connections, with the aim of advancing the mutual
interests of authors, publishers, data facilities, and end­users of the data, a recent Earth
and space science data and publishing conference, supported by the National Science
Foundation, was held at AGU Headquarters on 2­3 October 2014. It brought together
major publishers, data facilities, and consortia in the Earth and space sciences, as well as
governmental, association, and foundation funders. Further informational meetings were
held with Earth and space science societies, publishers, facilities, and librarians that were
not present at the October meeting. Collectively the publishers, data facilities, and
consortia focused on open data for Earth and space science formed a working group:
Coalition on Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences. As one outcome, this
group collectively endorsed the following commitments to make meaningful progress
toward the goals above. We encourage other publishers and data facilities and consortia
to join in support.
 

Signatory data facilities, publishers, and societies, in order to meet the need for
expanding access to data and to help authors, make the following commitments:
? We reaffirm and will ensure adherence to our existing repository, journal, and
publisher policies and society position statements regarding data sharing and
archiving of data, tools, and models.
? We encourage journals, publishers, and societies that do not have such statements
to develop them to meet the aspirations of open access to research data and to
support the integrity and value of published research. Examples of policies and
position statements from signatory journals and societies are listed here.
? Earth and space science data should, to the greatest extent possible, be stored in
appropriate domain repositories that are widely recognized and used by the
community, follow leading practices, and can provide additional data services.
We will work with researchers, funding agencies, libraries, institutions, and other
stakeholders to direct data to appropriate repositories, respecting repository
policies.
? Where it is not feasible or practical to store data on community­approved
repositories, journals should encourage and support archiving of data using
community­ established leading practices, which may include supplementary
material published with an article. These should strive to follow existing NISO
guidelines.

Over the coming year, the signatory Earth and space science publishers, journals, and
data facilities will work together to accomplish the following:
? Provide a usable online community directory of appropriate Earth and space
science community repositories for data, tools, and models that meet leading
standards on curation, quality, and access that can be used by authors and journals
as a guide and reference for data deposition.
? Promulgate metadata information and domain standards, including in the online
directory, to help simplify and standardize data deposition and re­use.
? Promote education of researchers in data management and organize and develop
training and educational tools and resources, including as part of the online
directory.
? Develop a working committee to update and curate this directory of repositories.
? Promote referencing of data sets using the Joint Declaration of Data Citation
Principles, in which citations of data sets should be included within reference
lists.
? Include in research papers concise statements indicating where data reside and
clarifying availability.
? Promote and implement links to data sets in publications and corresponding links
to journals in data facilities via persistent identifiers. Data sets should ideally be
referenced using registered DOI’s.
? Promote use of other relevant community permanent identifiers for samples
(IGSN), researchers (ORCID), and funders and grants (FundRef).
? Develop workflows within the repositories that support the peer review process
(for example, embargo periods with secure access) and within the editorial
management systems that will ease transfer of data to repositories.
 

A major challenge today is that much more Earth and space science data are being
collected than can be reasonably stored, curated, or accessed. This includes physical
samples, information about them, and digital data (sometimes streaming at rates of
terabytes per minute). Researchers and publishers are looking for guidance on what
constitutes archival data across diverse fields and disciplines. The major data repositories
provide leading practices that should help guide the types of samples, data, metadata, and
data processing descriptions that should be maintained, including information about
derivations, processing, and uncertainty.
 

To enable improved coordination and availability of open data, we encourage funders to
support these commitments, ensure a robust infrastructure of data repositories, and enable
broad outreach with researchers. As a general rule, data management plans promulgated
by funders should indicate that release into leading repositories, where available, of those
data necessary to support published results is expected at publication. The ultimate
measure of success is in the replicability of science, generation of new discoveries, and in
progress on the grand challenges facing society that depend on the integration of open
data, tools, and models from multiple sources.
 

Signatories
American Astronomical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Meteorological Society
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution (BCO­DMO)
Center for Open Science
CLIVAR and Carbon Hydrographic Data Office (CCHDO)
Community Inventory of EarthCube Resources for Geosciences Interoperability
(CINERGI)
Council of Data Facilities
Elsevier
European Geophysical Union
Geological Data Center of Scripps Insitution of Oceanography
ICSU World Data System
Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)
Integrated Earth Data Applications (IEDA)
John Wiley and Sons
Magnetics Information Consortium (MagIC)
Mineralogical Society of America
National Snow and Ice Data Center
Nature Publishing Group
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R)
Science