Quality push for marine research data and software

Last month, the UU-NIOZ steering team has approved a project to make a quality push in marine research data and software, in the context of open science.

Within this project, we will form a group of data/software engineers who will actively help marine scientists at UU and NIOZ to open and share their data and software and/or make these more visible for the global marine science communities. Please contact Erik van Sebille or Eric Epping if you are interested to be involved in this project, or have a code/data for which you would like help in publishing, cleaning or documenting.

As background, FAIR data and software are key aspects on the transition towards Open Science. These are especially important in the field of marine science, where observations and measurements are difficult and expensive to obtain. In some parts of marine science, there is a long international tradition of sharing data and software and in nearly all parts of marine science it is now mandatory to follow the principles of FAIR data (e.g. NWO, EU). However, many PIs lack time and resources to keep up with the latest technology and workflows to optimise their data and software sharing.

In recent years, NIOZ has put significant effort in building an infrastructure for the automated storing, processing, and archiving of data from research vessels and laboratories. From DAS (NIOZ Data Archive System), both raw and processed data may subsequently be published with a DOI in NIOZ Dataverse (NIOZ’ corporate data portal).

By upgrading this data infrastructure to a central national facility for the Dutch universities involved in marine sciences, we aim to improve the Findability, Accessibility, and Interoperability and thus to promote the sharing and Reuse of research products. This project covers the initial development of such a public ‘Dutch Marine Science Portal’ and some of its prime functionality as a first step in this endeavour.