About

Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) is poised to be the foundation of new innovative environmental science through a distributed framework and sustainable cyberinfrastructure that meets the needs of science and society for open, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and easily discovered Earth observational data.

Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, DataONE will ensure the preservation and access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national science data. DataONE will transcend domain boundaries and make biological data available from the genome to the ecosystem; make environmental data available from atmospheric, ecological, hydrological, and oceanographic sources; provide secure and long-term preservation and access; and engage scientists, land-managers, policy makers, students, educators, and the public through logical access and intuitive visualizations.

Most importantly, DataONE is not an end but a means to serve a broader range of science domains both directly and through the interoperability with the DataONE distributed network.

The foundation for excellence of DataONE is the established partnerships among participating organizations that have decades-long expertise in a wide range of fields that includes: existing archive initiatives, libraries, environmental observing systems and research networks, data and information management, science synthesis centers, and professional societies. This has led to a vision that:

"DataONE will be commonly used by researchers, educators, and the public to better understand and conserve life on earth and the environment that sustains it."

By creating an infrastructure of people, technology, and standards to support the full life cycle of biological, ecological, and environmental data and tools that enable universal access, DataONE will accelerate use of Earth observational data in research, education and decision-making. In so doing, DataONE will transform our understanding of ecological processes and conserve life on earth and the environment that sustains it. DataONE will engage its community of partners through working groups focused on identifying, describing, and implementing the DataONE cyber-infrastructure, governance, and sustainability models. These working groups, which consist of a diverse group of graduate students, educators, government and industry representatives, and leading computer, information, and library scientists will: (1) perform cutting edge computer science, informatics, and social science research related to all stages of the data life cycle; (2) develop DataONE interfaces and prototypes; (3) adopt/adapt interoperability standards; (4) create value-added technologies (e.g., semantic mediation, scientific workflow, and visualization) that facilitate data integration, analysis, and understanding; (5) address socio-cultural barriers to sustainable data preservation and data sharing; and (6) promote the adoption of best practices for managing the full data life cycle.

Education is integral to DataONE and spans formal graduate-level training in research and cyber-infrastructure development, to developing informal inquiry-based education modules that allow students of all ages to ask their own specific questions. Additionally, DataONE is committed to reach out to a broad and diverse community of users and will: provide training on “Best Data Practices” to scientists, students, and data managers via presentations, web forums, and multi-media that includes aspects of managing, preserving, analyzing and visualizing data; and engage students and citizens in science through efforts that span the entire data life cycle, from data gathering, to management, to analysis.

DataONE will make the scientist an active member in the full data life cycle and in so doing create a new paradigm for scientific data stewardship, sharing, and synthesis. This will lead to a generation of new science that is not limited by data access or organization. These goals are articulated in the DataONE mission:

“Enable new science and knowledge creation through universal access to data about life on earth and the environment that sustains it.”

Through novel projects and partnerships based on technologically sophisticated tools and infrastructure, DataONE serves scientific, educational, and conservation communities throughout North America and the world. This requires that we strategically define the scope of what we do, the audiences we serve, and how we intend to achieve our mission.