The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) is an NSF-funded project that enables the curation and re-use of environmental data, assisting researchers in archiving and publishing their data to ensure it is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). With nearly 40 years of data management experience, EDI operates as a certified repository, providing necessary tools and support for data synthesis, training, and outreach. Publishing data openly benefits scientific research by clarifying authorship and promoting collaboration while overcoming various challenges associated with data sharing.

1. The Environmental Data Initiative
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- Create . Package . Archive . Discover . Reuse -

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Objectives
Recognize EDI’s unique history and future.
Understand EDI’s core mission and focus.
Become familiar with EDI’s infrastructure and services.
Be capable of answering the question: Why should I publish my data?

3. EDI and The National Science Foundation
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The Environmental Data Initiative is an NSF-funded project, actively promoting
and enabling curation and re-use of environmental data. We assist researchers
from field stations, individual laboratories, and research projects of all sizes to
archive and publish their environmental data. EDI is committed to enable data that
is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR).

4. History
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Almost 40 years of LTER data management experience
1980s
Repository Infrastructure
2010
DataONE Member Node
2015
Digital Object Identifiers Minted
EDI
We are standing on the shoulders of giants!

5. Mission
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Support and accelerate curation and archive of
environmental data.
Follow guiding principles for data stewardship
of the earth sciences community.
Committed to enable Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) Data.

6. Mission
FAIR Guiding Principles:
● GO FAIR: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/
● Enabling FAIR data project: http://www.copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-
project/
● DataCite: https://datacite.org/index.html
Emphasis on rich metadata following , machine-actionability (i.e., the capacity of
computational systems to find, access, interoperate, and reuse data with none
or minimal human intervention) because humans increasingly rely on
computational support to deal with data as a result of the increase in volume,
complexity, and creation speed of data.
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7. Infrastructure
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● A secure and certified data repository
● Data portal
● Contributed data packages (5/20/2020)
○ 7538 (unique)
○ 20956 (all revisions)
● Total data packages (+ EcoTrends and Landsat):
○ 43904 (unique)
○ 72725 (all revisions)
● Hardware managed at University of New Mexico
Center for Advanced Research Computing
● Data content backed up to Amazon’s Glacier Cloud

8. Services
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● Support for archiving data
● Data curation software tools
● Training and council on data archiving best practices
● Support for data synthesis projects
○ Community survey data
○ Meteorological and hydrological data
● For environmental scientists and research agencies
(e.g. Long Term Ecological Research (LTER),
Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS),
Long Term Research in Environmental Biology
(LTREB), Macrosystems Biology (MSB))

9. Outreach
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● Data publishing training (webinars & workshops)
● Data management fellowship program
● Presence at conferences (ESA, AGU, ESIP,
OBFS)
○ Data help desk
○ Sessions
○ Posters
● Office hours
● Website
● Newsletter
● Twitter feed
● Slack channel

10. Why publish data?
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https://xkcd.com/1909/

11. Why publish data?
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Benefits Challenges
Clarifies authorship of data
Provenance, immutability
Having to learn new concepts and
tools
Fulfill funding agencies’ and journals’
requirements
Overcoming concerns related to data
sharing
Preservation of data and metadata
Re-formatting data into publishable
units.
Reuse of data to enable new science
Time investment in preparing data and
detailed metadata.
Saves time sharing data
First class research object

12. Accelerating data discovery
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A few options:
● EDI Data Search
● DataONE Data Search
● Google Dataset Search
● Personal data catalog

13. Promoting data to first class research objects
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● Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
● Linked to research IDs (e.g. ORCID)
● Citation and attribution

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Summary
EDI evolved from the data management best practices and expertise of the US
LTER Network to serve the broader ecological and environmental science
community.
The core mission of EDI is to accelerate the data curation abilities of the ecological
and environmental sciences.
EDI is a certified and trustworthy data repository and data curation services.
Publishing data in an open and accessible form creates new scientific
opportunities and meaningful attribution to authors.

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Resources
Contact
Website
Data portal
Slack
Twitter
GitHub EDIorg
GitHub PASTA+