Finding the Forest in the Trees: The Challenge of Combining Diverse Environmental Data by Committee for a Pilot Study on Database Interfaces

Author:Committee for a Pilot Study on Database Interfaces
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Earth Sciences
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 1995-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Documenting the Data

The center uses the "20-year rule"; that is, it prepares metadata that would make the data usable 20 years hence, when investigators who collected the data are no longer available for consultation. In the metadata, CDIAC especially emphasizes on limitations of the data and restrictions on possible uses. The documentation also discusses peculiarities and quirks that should be taken into account. In addition, it includes a hard copy of a subset of the data for validation purposes. This subset can be checked against the recipient's digital version to ensure that no problems have occurred during the transfer and loading of the data. Further, the documentation often includes one or more simple algorithms or derived variables to enable users to check on the integrity of the data set as a whole. For example, the documentation might contain the sum of a particular data parameter, added up over all records in the data set. Upon receipt of the data, the user could calculate this sum and compare it to the value in the documentation.

Both the data set and the documentation are reviewed by a team of independent reviewers. This review is made as rigorous as possible and is considered to be equivalent to a peer review of the data package and related metadata.

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