Category: nsf

DMPTool Funder Templates Updated

We are excited to announce the completion of the first project of our newly established DMPTool Editorial board. As of September 2020, the Board has audited 36 funder templates within the DMPTool and updated the templates when necessary to reflect current … Continue reading

Scientist Led or Mission Oriented – How much does it cost research funders to lead science?

Across national research systems, decisions about what research is funded are influenced by both researchers themselves, and policymakers with national priorities. However, beyond short term change in response to grants, it is unclear how the latter mission oriented form of research funding affects research practices over the long term. In this post Kyle Myers, shows that the funding needed to […]

DataONE Funded by NSF for Another Round!

This is a week for important funding announcements! I already blogged about our new NSF funding for a Data-Level Metrics project with PLOS and DataONE, and on the heels of that, DataONE has announced their newest round of funding! I’ve borrowed heavily from their press release for this post. If you aren’t familiar with the work DataONE has been doing, […]

Mountain Observatories in Reno

A few months ago, I blogged about my experiences at the NSF Large Facilities Workshop. “Large Facilities” encompass things like NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network), IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere), and the NRAO (National Radio Astronomy Observatory). I found the event itself to be an eye-opening experience: much […]

RDA Meeting Part 2: The Meeting in DC

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 […]

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 […]

It’s Time for Better Project Metrics

I’m involved in lots of projects, based at many institutions, with multiple funders and oodles of people involved. Each of these projects has requirements for reporting metrics that are used to prove the project is successful. Here, I want to argue that many of these metrics are arbitrary, and in some cases misleading. I’m not […]

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.…