Data management and sharing for collaborative science: lessons learnt from the Euromammals initiative

The current and future consequences of anthropogenic impacts such as climate change, habitat loss on ecosystems can only be addressed if ecological data from multiple environmental contexts are readily available to the scientific scrutiny of the research community. Although a number of repositories to store shared data have emerged in different ecological domains and developments are underway to define common data and metadata standards, the goal is far from being achieved and many challenges still need to be addressed. The definition of best practices for data sharing and re-use can benefit from the experience accumulated by pilot collaborative projects. The Euromammals bottom-up initiative has pioneered collaborative science in spatial animal ecology since 2007, involving more than 150 institutes to address scientific, management and conservation questions regarding terrestrial mammal species ranging in Europe using data stored in a shared database. In this manuscript we present some key lessons that we have learnt from the process of making shared data and knowledge accessible to researchers. We suggest putting in place a pro-active data review before data are made available in shared repositories via robust technical support and users’ training in data management and standards. We recommend pursuing the definition of common data collection protocols, data and metadata standards, and shared vocabularies with a direct involvement of the community to boost their implementation. We stress the importance of knowledge sharing, in addition to data sharing, and collaborative networking with pro-active involvement of data providers in all stages of the scientific process, from data quality check, to implementation of the scientific outputs. For data-sharing collaborative efforts to obtain substantial and durable scientific returns, the goals should not only consist in the creation of e-infrastructures and software tools but primarily in the establishment of a network and community trust, which requires moderate, but long-term investment.

URBANO Ferdinando;  CAGNACCI Francesca; 

2022-11-30

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA

JRC125396

2296-701X (online),   

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.727023,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125396,   

10.3389/fevo.2021.727023 (online),