DataONE

Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE)^[1] is a project supported by the National Science Foundation under the DataNet program. DataONE will provide scientific data archiving for ecological and environmental data produced by scientists worldwide. DataONE's stated goal is to preserve and provide access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national data. The community of users for DataONE includes scientists, ecosystem managers, policy makers, students, educators, and the public.

DataONE will link together existing cyberinfrastructure to provide a distributed framework, sound management, and robust technologies that enable long-term preservation of diverse multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national observational data. The distributed framework will be composed of Coordinating Nodes currently located at the Oak Ridge Campus, University of California Santa Barbara, and University of New Mexico, and many Member Nodes, located globally. DataONE will also provide an Investigator Tool Kit that will provide the DataONE users community with tools for accessing and using DataONE efficiently.

Coordinating nodes

Coordinating Nodes will provide network-wide services to Member Nodes. They will be geographically replicated, with mirrored content and full copies of science metadata. The three Coordinating Nodes are:

University of New Mexico ^[2]
Oak Ridge Campus (partnership of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and University of Tennessee)
University of California, Santa Barbara, UCSB^[3]

Member nodes

Member Nodes will consist of Earth observing institutions, projects, and networks. They will provide resources for their own data and replicated data, and focus on serving their specific constituencies. These member nodes are geographically distributed and consist of diverse implementations. Current Member Nodes include:

Dryad ^[4]
ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center ^[5]
Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity ^[6]

Investigator Tool Kit

The Tool Kit will provide tools for researchers to access DataONE. These will be both general purpose and discipline-specific tools, and DataONE developers will adapt existing tools where possible. The Tool Kit will include Java and Python libraries, an R programming language plug-in for analysis, extensions for Excel, the VisTrails scientific workflow, and the Kepler scientific workflow system.

Data management

DataONE will provide a place for scientists to store data and its associated metadata. The metadata will then make this data searchable and accessible to other scientists. Data management practices include

Data management planning
Data acquisition (techniques, protocols, methods)
Data protection (backing up)
Data entry and manipulation (naming files, organization)
Quality control on data
Data analysis
Workflow tools (VisTrails, Kepler scientific workflow system)
Data documentation (metadata)
Data sharing, citation, and discovery
Data preservation & curation

DataONE community

The DataONE community includes research networks, professional societies, libraries, academic institutions, data centers, data repositories, environmental observatory networks, educators, scientists, policy makers, administrators, citizen scientists, international organizations, NGOs, ecosystem managers, students, private companies and the public.