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Home  »  Big Data • Data and data management • Data formats • Databases • Ecology • Environment • FAIR • Freshwater • Marine • Metadata • Open source • Policy support   »   Is NERC research data accessible?

Is NERC research data accessible?

Posted on December 3, 2020December 4, 2020 by Jenny Brown

Well to answer that we are putting data archives and portals to the test with our #EnvironmentalDataDiscovery Trails.

Why have we suddenly asked this question? Following the NERC COVID-19 hackathons it was realised a lot of data sources are used for environmental challenges, but not always data that are publicly available following UKRI-funded research. Given our aim is to follow the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles we decided it was time to collect information to help us improve.

The first trail was run as an 8-question online Digital Trail quiz from 25th November to 2nd December 2020. The questions navigated water quality data and metadata held by BODC and the UKCEH UKSCAPE project. The aim was to find the data or metadata to answer each question and give it a rating to assess how easy or difficult it was to find. For us the feedback on information accessibility was most important and will be used to steer future data delivery plans. We hopefully reflected that by entering all those that submitted feedback into our prize draw, even if they couldn’t find the answers or it was taking too long to find the answer.

Promotion worked well with 478 views of the site during the event suggesting there’s lots of interest in environmental data sources and the quizzes are a good way to raise awareness of data archives. One of our water bottle winners said – it’s always nice to find out new ways for finding data. However, out of those views we had 72 participants, mainly from early career academic backgrounds. This indicated the style of the quiz was maybe a little off putting to the general public. Given we set out to target academics and data users this time, we are happy with the uptake and will consider a different approach to make future quizzes more appealing to a wider audience. After the first 24 hours we realised not everyone participating was submitting final results. We quickly clarified that if the answer was too difficult to find, tell us in the feedback and carry on. All participants then continued to submit their feedback. In total we received 66 results.

Sadly the scores (an average of 38% correct answers) and feedback indicate the data are quite hard to find unless you are familiar with it, but that gives us lots to work with to improve accessibility going forwards. The content of the feedback has been captured in the below to give you a flavour of what was said.

In response to the comments we will have a think about the style of the quiz to make it more interesting and quicker to navigate as we explore other data centre and project archives through 2021.

If you missed out this time, not to worry there will be more trails in the New Year with opportunities to win a NERC water bottle or £100. Keep an eye on our website (https://digitalenvironment.org/data-trails/) or opt in for an email alert when a quiz goes live (https://noc-events.co.uk/environmental-data-discovery-trails-opt-form).

Big Data Data and data management Data formats Databases Ecology Environment FAIR Freshwater Marine Metadata Open source Policy support #data-trail #EnvironmentalDataDiscovery

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