The US' National Science Foundation has announced a $2.18 grant for Dryad, a digital data repository designed to archive data that underlie published findings in evolutionary biology, ecology and related fields. The repository allows scientists to access and build on each other's findings.
The grant recipients are University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Metadata Research Center (MRC) in the School of Information and Library Science; North Carolina State University's Digital Library Program; Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network Office at the University of New Mexico; Yale University's TreeBASE database; and National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESC), a collaborative effort involving UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke and North Carolina State universities.
NESC and MRC have been developing Dryad in coordination with a large group of journals and societies in evolutionary biology and ecology. With the new grant, the additional team members are contributing to the development of the repository. The work on the repository also coincides with Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this year and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his The Origin of Species. Some of the data on Darwin's finches are included in Dryad.
Currently, a tremendous amount of information underlying published research findings is lost, researchers say. The lack of data sharing and preservation makes it impossible for the data to be examined or re-used by future investigators.
Dryad seeks to address these shortcomings and allow scientists to validate published findings; explore new analysis methodologies; repurpose data for research questions unanticipated by the original authors; integrate data across studies; and look for trends through statistical meta-analysis. The resource is being designed with a consortium of stakeholders who include representatives of more than a dozen journals in evolutionary biology and ecology. The consortium sets policy and is responsible for long-term financial sustainability. Dryad is intended to serve as a model for the many other scientific disciplines facing similar challenges in data preservation and sharing.
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