STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, and IEDA (Integrated Earth Data Applications), an NSF-funded data facility in the geosciences at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, are jointly launching a new competition, the International Data Rescue Competition, which aims to improve preservation and access of research data in the earth sciences discipline. The challenge invites members of the international geosciences community who have worked on efforts that advance preservation and access of research data, particularly dark data, to share their work and the varied ways that these data are being processed, stored and used.
In launching the competition, Elsevier and IEDA hope to showcase the breadth, depth and diversity of existing initiatives for disclosing research data within the field of geosciences, to promote recognition of these efforts and to encourage new developments in this direction. In addition, they hope to encourage the establishment of a multi-disciplinary community across all areas of geosciences to discuss the multitude of tools and methods that are being developed to rescue data from oblivion and stimulate the sharing of knowledge, tools and standards pertaining to making research data reusable across various earth and environmental sciences domains.
As part of the submission process each participant must describe different aspects of their data rescue project, including examples of the data as it looked before and after the rescue process; a description of ways in which the data could be or is used after being made available electronically; a description of metadata, models and standards and the data repository or collection used to make the data available to be accessed and used; and a description of the rescue process, whether it be manual, automated, or a combination of both.
A cross-disciplinary panel of judges will assess the submissions and invite the top ten proposals to a special award ceremony to be held in December 2013. The award will consist of a Data Rescue trophy and $ 5000.
Researcher proposals are welcome to be submitted until October 10, 2013. Details of the competition criteria and a link to a submission template can be found on the Data Rescue Award website: http://researchdata.elsevier.com/datachallenge.
