EASYDAB (Earth System Data Branding): Enhancing the Findability and the
Reuse of FAIR and Open Data
Abstract
Even though in Earth System Sciences (ESS) the importance of good
research data management has been widely discussed, the easy
discoverability of quality-checked data has not yet been addressed in
detail. This is the aim of the Earth System Data Branding (EASYDAB).
EASYDAB is a branding to highlight FAIR and open data from Earth System
Sciences that are published with DataCite DOIs. The EASYDAB guideline
defines principles on how to achieve high metadata quality of ESS
datasets by demanding specific metadata information. The EASYDAB logo is
protected and may only be used by repositories that agree to follow the
EASYDAB terms. The logo indicates that published data have an open
licence, open file formats and rich metadata information. Quality
controls by the responsible repository ensure that these conditions are
met. For the control, the repository can choose between different
approved quality guidelines such as e.g. the ATMODAT Standard, ISO 19115
or the OGC Geopackage Encoding Standard. Ideally, a quality guideline
provides detailed mandatory and recommended specifications for rich
metadata in the data files, the DataCite DOI and the landing page. One
example of such a quality guideline is the ATMODAT standard, which has
been developed specifically for atmospheric model data (AtMoDat
project). In addition to the metadata specifications, it also demands
controlled vocabularies, structured landing pages and specific file
formats (netCDF). The ATMODAT standard includes checklists for data
producers and data curators so that compliance with the requirements can
easily be obtained by both sides. To facilitate an automated compliance
check of the netCDF files metadata, a Python tool has also been
developed and published. The automated checking of the quality
principles enables a simplified control of the data by the repository.
Nevertheless, repositories can also use checklists for the curation of
the data. The overall aim of the curation of EASYDAB datasets shall
always be the enhancement of the reuse of reviewed, high-quality data.
Therefore, EASYDAB shows scientists the way to open and FAIR data while
it enables repositories to indicate their efforts in publishing data
with high maturity.