Category: News

Dear EDI user,

Just a short note reassuring you that operations of the EDI data repository will continue as normal during this COVID-19 health crisis. All systems are monitored remotely by our technical team through our system dashboard, and we are alerted to any infrastructure faults by automated notifications. In the event of a hardware issue that does require onsite presence, we will do our best to address any problems as expeditiously as possible given current health and safety restrictions in place by the State of New Mexico. We thank you for your continued support and patience during these extraordinary times. Comments or questions may be directed to support@environmentaldatainitiative.org.

Sincerely,
The EDI technical team

The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) assists researchers from field stations, individual laboratories, and research projects of all sizes to archive and publish their environmental data. EDI’s very successful Summer Fellowship Program for Data Management Training is one component of our Outreach and Training program. For the third consecutive year, EDI is reviewing applications from interested undergraduate and graduate students to become an EDI summer fellow. This year we are seeking nine fellows to be trained in the data publishing process and to support 9 research sites in their efforts to manage their data. EDI’s aim is to ensure that these young professionals learn state-of-the-art data stewardship practices. Continue reading “The Summer Fellowship Program of the Environmental Data Initiative” →

Data is becoming increasingly citable as first-order objects, including data archived in the EDI repository. One indication is that data package publications are indexed in personal Google Scholar user profiles, along with other scholarly articles, as for example in the profile of Paul Hanson (Research Professor at the Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-Madison).

There is also an increase in the number of cited data packages in scholarly articles. The figure below shows the annual number of EDI data package citations in scholarly articles over the past seven years as derived from Google Scholar.

In order for a data publication to be discoverable by search engines, including Google Scholar and Google’s Data Set Search, the data package needs to be “indexed”. A while ago EDI implemented sitemaps.org and schema.org metadata (often called Search Engine Optimization) to support search engine discovery and indexing of data packages archived in the EDI repository. Sitemaps metadata serves as a table of contents for high-value information found on websites so that search engines may more easily discover relevant web pages to index. For EDI, the sitemaps metadata points to the most recent data package versions, accessible through the EDI Data Portal, and is refreshed hourly.

We are delighted to announce that EDI receives continued funding through grants from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Biological Infrastructure to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Award #1931174) and the University of New Mexico (Award #1931143): “Collaborative Research: Environmental Data Initiative: Sustaining the Legacy of Scientific Data”.