Community developed data reporting formats can enable FAIR data in Earth and Environmental Science

Robert Crystal-Ornelas, Charuleka Varadharajan, Joan Ball-Damerow, Madison Burrus, Zarine Kakalia and Emily Robles, Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA, Ben Bond-Lamberty and Stephanie C. Pennington, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Kristin Boye, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, Shreyas Cholia, Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Ranjeet Devarakonda, Environmental Sciences Division & Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, Kim S. Ely and Alistair Rogers, Environmental & Climate Sciences Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, Amy E. Goldman, Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, Susan Heinz and Terri Velliquette, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Valerie Hendrix, Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA, Fianna O’Brien, Computational Research Division, Maegen Simmonds and Karen Whitenack, Earth and Environmental Sciences Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pamela Weisenhorn, Biosciences Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, Jessica N. Welch, Environmental Sciences Division, ORNL DAAC, Oak Ridge, TN, Deborah A. Agarwal, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA

Background/Question/Methods
Many ecologists and earth scientists are required, either by funders or journals, to archive the data they produce in long-term repositories. This ensures that data are preserved, available to assess scientific conclusions, and reused after they are collected. However, for data to be reused to its full potential, it should be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Though many generalist repositories have developed strategies for enabling users to locate and download content, interoperability and reuse remains a challenge. A key step toward FAIRer data is the development of community reporting formats for data and metadata, along with user-friendly guidelines and tools, these formats can help ensure that data are consistently formatted and well-described. When developed and adopted across a scientific community, such reporting formats allow others to discover, interpret, integrate, and reuse valuable data.
ESS-DIVE (Environmental Systems Science Data Infrastructure for a Virtual Ecosystem) is the Department of Energy’s repository for Environmental and Earth Science data. Beginning in 2019, ESS-DIVE partnered with seven teams of interdisciplinary researchers to develop data reporting formats: community-oriented guidelines that help scientists format and describe their data consistently.
The teams reviewed existing data standards within their domain (e.g., leaf gas exchange, soil respiration), and then conducted interviews with data producers and users (e.g., modelers) to identify elements that would make adoption of their format likely and the resulting data useful. The teams received several rounds of feedback on the reporting formats from their respective communities of scientists.

Results/Conclusions
ESS-DIVE’s Community GitHub Space (https://github.com/ess-dive-community) now hosts the supporting documentation and tools for eight community-developed data and metadata reporting formats. Each provides instructions, tools, and templates to enable researchers to make their data and metadata more FAIR.
The implication of this work is that data stored in repositories like ESS-DIVE will have consistent metadata and data formatting that, when adopted across significant portions of the research community, should increase the likelihood of reuse. When data are formatted consistently with descriptive metadata, it helps data users conduct synthesis research by minimizing the burden of data curation.
Moreover, our community-centric model of bringing together teams of researchers to produce the data reporting formats serves as a framework showing how investment in community-building can facilitate development of consistent protocols for archiving and sharing data and metadata. The next phase of work for ESS-DIVE and our community of researchers is to continue efforts to educate and encourage data reporting format adoption.