Meeting: Advancing the Accessibility of Data for Behavioral Research in the 21st Century; Ithaca, NY - Summer, 2016

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The digital era has created new opportunities for data storage and access, leading to an atmosphere and expectation for open data sharing that will benefit the broader scientific community. For the field of animal behavior, data sharing and access presents a range of challenges due to the collection and use of numerous data types, the need to address standards, and a common strategy for archiving some key data types. For example, audiovisual recordings require substantial "hands on" time for processing, large storage capacity for large files, rich descriptive metadata, and constant migration to new formats as technologies change. As a consequence, these behavioral data remain prohibitively under-curated and broadly inaccessible to the biological research community. Yet, at the same time, biologists and other researchers are collecting vast amounts of such data, and this trend is increasing as recording technologies become more sophisticated and inexpensive. These data will remain generally inaccessible if the challenges of archiving digital media are not addressed. This award funds a workshop to be held at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 2016. The meeting will bring together experts from a number of relevant fields to discuss preservation and accessibility of samples relevant to research on animal behavior and physiology. Representatives and experts from several stakeholder communities will come together to document the challenges of making behavioral data broadly accessible, and to develop a framework that prioritizes the key issues. Outcomes will be published in a white paper and a formal publication. The meeting will be relevant to the development of methods and approaches to citizen science projects that emphasize the use of digital media. Graduate students and postdocs will participate in the meeting itself, providing a valuable experience and enhancing their training and background in data archiving and accessibility.