Resource Overview¶

This section is where you provide a general overview of your dataset and describe it in its most general form. For some data portals, fields in the Resource Overview section are what gets displayed in search results, so it’s important to thoroughly and accurately describe your dataset here.

Basic Overview¶

Field

Best Practice

Example

Title

Dataset titles should be as descriptive as possible and contain references to the following information:

data type,
location,
date ranges represented by the data,
program or institution name (if your dataset is part of a large effort).

Titles should contain only numbers, letters, dashes, underscores, periods, commas, colons, parentheses, and spaces—no special characters such as ampersands.

Aerial survey data for the assessment of the distribution of cownose rays (Rhinoptera bonasus) in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico, from May to October 2008
Vessel line-transect surveys of Arctic marine mammals in the BeaufortSea by Arctic Marine Biodiversity Observing Network (AMBON) research cruise on board the vessel Norseman II from August 8, 2015 to September 3, 2015

Abstract

Use this field to describe your dataset itself (i.e., the data files you are archiving and their contents) rather than your project or your results. This will be different than the Abstract you would write for a report or paper. A good dataset abstract contains the following elements at a minimum:

overview statement summarizing the study;
short description of the dataset itself and the format it’s stored in;
a brief description of how the dataset was created;
a general timeline for when the data were collected (by season or month and year);
a general location where data were collected or generated.

Data in this collection include fork-tailed storm-petrel chick (Oceanodroma furcata) diet data collected from birds at St. Lazaria Island, Alaska Maritime NWR (AMNWR) sites during summers 1995 to 2013. Data were generated from seabird diet samples consisting of regurgitations collected from adults returning to the colony to feed chicks. Data were collected as part of AMNWR efforts to collect baseline status and trend information for a suite of seabird species across the Gulf of Alaska and Bering and Chukchi seas.

Data are presented as two CSV files: STL_FTSP_DIET_1995_2013_freq occurrence.csv contains the frequency of occurrence of major prey items in diets of fork-tailed storm-petrel chicks at St. Lazaria Island. The total number of diet samples and the frequency of prey items (expressed as the percentage of food samples in which each prey item was present) by year are included. Prey items contained in the diet samples were identified in the laboratory to lowest taxon possible (some prey items were identified to species while others were only identified to genus, family, order, etc.), including cephalopod, coleoidea, fish (general), fish by genus or species, and other or unidentified prey items. STL_FTSP_DIET_1995_2013_percent comp.csv contains the percent composition of major prey items in diets of fork-tailed storm-petrel chicks at St. Lazaria Island, Alaska. The total number of samples, number of seabirds sampled, and percent composition (expressed as the percentage of total individual prey items comprised by each prey item (sums to 100% each year)) by year are included. Prey items contained in the diet samples were identified to lowest taxon possible, including invertebrates, amphipod, fish, zooplankton, and other prey items.

Purpose

The purpose of this field is to help future users of your data understand why your research was conducted. A brief statement (1-2 sentences) of the ecological or environmental significance of your project is sufficient here.

This dataset was developed as part of a research project investigating the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on salt marsh biogeochemistry. This particular project was directed to determine: 1) if the marsh’s ability to cycle reactive nitrogen was inhibited (nitrification potential); 2) if there was a significant impact on ammonia-oxidizing archaeal (AOA) and bacterial (AOB) communities; and 3) if there were spatial (regional, within marsh) or temporal patterns in nitrification potential. (source: Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative)

Contacts¶

Detailed Contact Information¶

Contacts should include any individual person, organization, or position who is responsible for any data in the project, along with anyone tasked with overseeing the project as a whole. Contacts and their associated roles determine how dataset citations are generated. Guidelines for including contacts within each field are described in the table below.

Field	Best Practice	Example
Point of Contact	The person primarily responsible for responding to inquires about this dataset. If this metadata is archived in the Reserach Workspace DataONE Member Node, this Point of Contact will not be added to the citation created for the dataset.	Jane Researcher Professor of High Esteem University of Somewhere 123456 Apple Road Somewhere, AK 98765 (111) 111-1111 jane.researcher@somewhere.edu www.somewhereuniversity.com
Principal Investigator	The person primarily responsible for conducting this research. This is typically the lead researcher or author of the project. The Principal Investigator may be the same as the Point of Contact. If this metadata is archived in the Reserach Workspace DataONE Member Node, the Principal Investigator will be added to the citation created for the dataset.
Originator	The person primarily responsible for the creation of this dataset in its current form. The Originator may be the same as the Principal Investigator. If this metadata is archived in the Reserach Workspace DataONE Member Node, the Originator will be added to the citation created for the dataset.
Additional Point(s) of Contact	Any other important individuals associated with the dataset, including other researchers, collaborators, funding representatives, etc. If this metadata is archived in the Reserach Workspace DataONE Member Node, these additional contacts will be added to the citation created for the dataset if and only if they are assigned one of the following role codes: ‘Author’, ‘Originator’, ‘Owner’, ‘Principal Investigator’.	Jane Researcher Professor of High Esteem University of Somewhere 123456 Apple Road Somewhere, AK 98765 (111) 111-1111 jane.researcher@somewhere.edu www.somewhereuniversity.com Originator

Individual Contact Information fields and Role Code definitions are described elsewhere in the help text.

Additional Credit¶

Use this field to thank or reference any individuals or organizations who are responsible for some aspect of the dataset or project, but who need not be contacted with questions or who are not responsible for maintenance of the dataset or project metadata. For example, this field should be used for referencing funding organizations, and should include award names and numbers whenever possible.

Category and Form¶

These are standard metadata fields used for data indexing and reference.

Field

Best Practice

Example

Topic Category

The main theme(s) of the dataset. This field assists in the grouping and search of datasets within potential catalogs.

Definitions for topic category code values are available elsewhere in the help docs.

Presentation Form

For this field, add a selection for each different type of file that makes up your dataset. As most datasets scientific datasets are tabular, the most common appropriate value from those in the list is Table Digital. Definitions for all presentation form values available in the dropdown are available elsewhere in the help docs.

Table Digital:

spreadsheets (e.g., Excel files)
databases
CSV files

Audio Digital:

raw acoustic files

Map Digital:

shapefiles

Video Digital:

raw sonar files