In last week’s post, I outlined the basic structure of the Research Data Alliance, a group intent on enabling international data sharing and collaboration. I attended the recent RDA 2nd Plenary in Washington, DC last week, and will share a few insights below. The Good Stuff The RDA has some seriously admirable ambitions, and they […]
Category: Data Sharing
RDA Meeting Part 1: The RDA Organization
This week nearly 400 data nerds flooded the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, for the second Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance. I was among those nerds, and I’ll review some highlights of the #RDAplenary in my next blog post. First, however, I want to provide an overview of this thing called […]
Software Carpentry and Data Management
About a year ago, I started hearing about Software Carpentry. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I envisioned tech-types showing up at your house with routers, hard drives, and wireless mice to repair whatever software was damaged by careless fumblings. Of course, this is completely wrong. I now know that it is actually […]
Large Facilities & the Data they Produce
Last week I spent three days in the desert, south of Albuquerque, at the NSF Large Facilities Workshop. What are these “large facilities”, you ask? I did too… this was a new world for me, but the workshop ended up being a great learning experience. The NSF has a Large Facilities Office within the Office of […]
Closed Data… Excuses, Excuses
If you are a fan of data sharing, open data, open science, and generally openness in research, you’ve heard them all: excuses for keeping data out of the public domain. If you are NOT a fan of openness, you should be. For both groups (the fans and the haters), I’ve decided to construct a “Frankenstein monster” […]
The Who’s Who of Publishing Research
This week’s blog post is a bit more of a Sociology of science topic… Perhaps only marginally related to the usual content surrounding data, but still worth consideration. I recently heard a talk by Laura Czerniewicz, from University of Cape Town’s Centre for Educational Technology. She was among the speakers during the Context session at Beyond the […]
The New OSTP Policy & What it Means
Last week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) responded to calls for broader access to federally funded research. I was curious as to whether this policy had any teeth, so I actually read the official memorandum. Here I summarize and have a few thoughts. The overall theme of the document is best […]
At the AGU meeting, inspiration and camaraderie
At about 8:30 am on the morning of December 4th, in the hallway by the elevator on the ninth floor of a hotel in downtown San Francisco, I met a nicely dressed and impatient woman. “I’ve let two elevator cars go by,” she said, frustrated. “They were packed full of people wearing name tags around …
Big Data: Call for your words and images
Our three-part series on Big Data is an invitation to discussion.
We’re looking for YOUR best stories, essays and images related to Big Data in ecology and environmental science. We’ll highlight excerpts from our favorites here on our blog will be available within the comments of this blog.
We’re aiming to represent a range of ideas as well as cultivate deep discussions around focused subtopics. As long as it relates to Big Data and ecology/environmental science it’s fair game, but we are particularly interested in discussion of the following points:
What’s one of the biggest challenges of ecological Big Data, and how can/should we address it (or what is someone already doing to address it)?…
Macrosystems Biology: How to share, manage and cite big data and team science?
Last month, I participated in the first Principal Investigator meeting of NSF’s new Macrosystems Biology program. The NSF solicits proposals to “support quantitative, interdisciplinary, systems-oriented research on biosphere processes and their complex interactions with climate, land use, and invasive species at regional to continental scales.”
The first groups of projects cover an incredible range of topics, and are embracing a wide range of research approaches. In a pre-meeting survey, projects reported using simulation models, developing new theory, fitting empirical models to multi-scaled data, analyzing paleoecological data and implementing experiments across linked networks ofsites. Almost half the groups reflected the newness of the continental-scale approach by including significant educational activities.…