Collaborative Research: Sustained Resources: Neotoma: Advancing Earth Science via Growth of Well-Curated Open Paleodata

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. Neotoma is one of the most widely used and trusted international data resources for fossil data, growing rapidly in the volume and variety of its data holdings, functionality of its software services, and the size and scope of its user community. This award will allow Neotoma to grow and enhance systems to support higher rates of data additions, more streamlined data curation, and better support solutions for new communities seeking to use Neotoma data. This project provides access to publicly funded data and supports researchers, educators, and the public by providing a high-quality, expert-curated open data resource for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental data. Specific activities for this project include better support for rapid upload of hundreds to thousands of datasets from participating research teams through enhancements to the Data Bulk Uploader System (DataBUS), with newly added ORCID user authentication and support for the popular Linked Paleodata (LiPD) format. Embargo Manager will support early data contributions and better data management practice, in alignment with NSF Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) Data and Sample Policy. The Hierarchical Vocabulary and Taxonomy Manager (HVTM) will improve data quality and interoperability by enabling efficient viewing and curation of controlled vocabularies. Neotoma will freely upload supported data types, with priority for NSF-EAR PI data, and will help on-board major geoscience paleodata communities. Neotoma PIs will develop and provide multiple training support activities for scientists, with focused workshops for early career researchers (ECRs) and scientists from underserved regions, multi-lingual support for workshops and online resources, publicly posted training videos, and model workflows for data handling. Neotoma developers will reduce barriers to access and support artificial intelligence and machine-learning applications by deepening Neotoma’s metadata provisioning to Science-on-Schema and DataCite. Lastly, Neotoma stewards will create custom-tailored training and leadership opportunities for ECRs by designing workshops, videos, and code vignettes to address ECR-identified challenges. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.