Site Descriptors Project

Problem: Tracking publications associated with a field station or site is difficult. There is no clear or standard way to cite field station descriptions.

Proposal: Create individual, citable “publications” with associated persistent identifiers for each field station (more generically called a “site”). Collect these publications in a central location.

What these Publications Look Like

  • Can be used to describe any site used for research. Examples include field stations, marine labs, sampling sites, collection locations, instrument locations, laboratory facilities, etc..
  • Each publication gets a DOI
  • Descriptions can be updated periodically. Updates = versions. Can’t edit existing document; must submit new one. Can use same DOI for single site though.
  • Can be exported as EML XML or as human-readable PDF
  • Format
    • Standardized, structured description of site - metadata fields, plus supplementary material such as images, descriptive blurbs, etc.
    • Decisions for each field: what it’s called, whether it’s mandatory, whether it has limited responses, how it maps to datacite, how it maps to EML
    • See Site Descriptor Content Spreadsheet for more information/example

How the Publications are Collected/Displayed:

Collect these Site Descriptors in the general use DataONE repository, ONEShare. The user interface will be a new instance of the existing UC3 Dash service (under development) with some modifications for Site Descriptors.

Existing Site Descriptions

Field Stations Visual