All Learning Resources

A collection of tutorials, called "data recipes" that describe how to use Earth science data from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) using easily available tools and commonly used formats for Earth science data such as NetCDF, ASCII, HDF-5, and shapefile.  These tutorials are available to assist those wishing to learn or teach how to obtain and view these data. 

Grant proposals for a growing number of funders require data management plans, including the National Science Foundation. Developing a competitive data management plan requires understanding and effectively addressing the many aspects of research data management that funders and reviewers emphasize (e.g., plans for research data security, sharing, and documentation). Join Data Management Services for a training session on preparing data management plans. During this one-hour workshop, we will cover the research data questions one should answer in creating an effective, competitive plan. Participants will have an opportunity to ask data management and planning questions specific to their research.

This is one of six interactive modules created to help researchers, data stewards, managers and the public gain an understanding of the value of data management in science and provide best practices to perform good data management within their organization. In this module, we will provide an overview of data management plans. First, we will define and describe Data Management Plans, or DMPs. We will then explain the benefits of creating a DMP. Finally, we will provide instructions on how to prepare a DMP, including covering key components common to most DMPs.

This is one of six interactive modules created to help researchers, data stewards, managers and the public gain an understanding of the value of data management in science and provide best practices to perform good data management within their organization. By the end of this module, you should be able to answer the following questions…  What is a science data lifecycle?  Why is a science data lifecycle important and useful?  What are the elements of the USGS science data lifecycle, and how are they connected?  What are the difference roles and responsibilities?  Where do you go if you need more information?

Begins with a brief overview of how the components of the ISO 19115-2 metadata standard are organized, followed by an example completed metadata record. Overview of how to use NOAA NCEI's ISO workbooks and EDM Wiki as resources for writing ISO metadata. The video is 34 minutes. 

YouTube Channel of videos on various topics related to world soils data creation and management.  Example categories of videos include Digital Soil Mapping; Screencast:  How to use ISRIC's Soil Data Hub; Sustainable Soil Managment; and Global Soil Information Facilities.  

This webinar is the second in a two-part webinar focused on Environmental Data Management Best Practices.  The topic of this webinar is geospatial data, and is one of a series of educational workshops focused on best practices for and tips to best manage environmental research data presented by experts from the NASA's Distributed Active Archive Center for Biogeochemical Dynamics.  

From this home page, a variety of GeoMapApp-related education activities and resources is available. The educational materials target audiences ranging from middle school and high school level to the undergraduate and graduate level.  Resources available include, for example:  mini lessons, GeoMapApp learning activities, data exercises and tutorials.  

GeoMapApp is an earth science exploration and visualization application that is continually being expanded as part of the Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS) at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. The application provides direct access to the Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) compilation that hosts high resolution (~100 m node spacing) bathymetry from multibeam data for ocean areas and ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) and NED (National Elevation Dataset) topography datasets for the global land masses.  

Are you intrigued, interested or simply a bit confused by persistent identifiers and would like to know more? Then this introductory level webinar is for you! The webinar will be especially interesting if you are working with digital archives and digital collections. You will get a clear understanding of what persistent identifiers are, why they are important and how trustworthy they are. We also discuss how you can determine the most appropriate identifier for your needs. Note that this is not a deeply technical webinar.

Topics that will be covered include:

- What are persistent identifiers?
- The case for PIDs – knowing what’s what and who’s who
- The data architecture of PIDs
- What is social infrastructure and why is it important?
- Review of current identifier systems
- How to choose a PID System
- Case studies in documents, data, video

This is part 1 of a 3 part series.

Copies of version 2 of the slides can be found at:  https://figshare.com/articles/Overview_of_PID_Systems_for_THOR_Webinar/5...
Version 2 of the slides have the following DOI:  https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.5016803.v2 .

Cultural heritage organisations, regardless of size, are often hesitant to implement PIDs. They lack knowledge of what PIDs are, don’t know about their capabilities and benefits, and fear a possible complex and costly implementation process as well as the maintenance costs for a sustained service. The Digital Heritage Network and the Dutch Coalition on Digital Preservation addresses these issues in three ways:

By raising awareness of (the importance of) PIDs in cultural heritage organisations.
By increasing the knowledge regarding the use of PIDs within cultural heritage.
By supporting the technical implementation of PIDs in cultural heritage collection management systems. How we did this on a nationwide scale will be explained in the webinar.

There are multiple PID systems. But which system is most suited to your situation: Archival Resource Keys (ARKs), Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), Handle, OpenURL, Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (PURLs) or Uniform Resource Names (URNs)? Each system has its own particular properties, strengths and weaknesses. The PID Guide from the Digital Heritage Network’s Persistent Identifier project helps you learn and think about important PID subjects, and guides your first steps towards selecting a PID system.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series.

This two-day workshop combines both presentations and interactive activities, exercises, and discussions, will provide Ph.D. students with practical skills directly applicable to their own research. Drawing on a wide range of data – both quantitative and qualitative – the workshop will address the following key topics in data management:

• Documentation and contextual description
• Ethical and legal aspects of managing and sharing sensitive data
• Anonymising research data for reuse
• Writing a data management plan
• Data handling (e.g. file organisation and data storage and security)
• Data preparation

By the end of the workshop, participants will know how to apply good data management practices in their own research and will be able to work more efficiently and effectively with data individually or as part of a research team, where data are often co-produced and shared.

From the Agenda on the home page, the PDF, text, and Epub versions of these slide presentations can be accessed by clicking on the link for each presentation.

This video presentation is Session 2 of 3 from the ODINAFRICA Ocean Data Portal (ODP) training-of-trainers course.  The ODP course demonstrates the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) Ocean Data Portal V2. The focus is on ODP Data Provider for national nodes (NODCs). This course includes some specific topics like an introduction to Linux OS and an application server which are used as an operating environment. This course can be also used to gain a better understanding of the IODE Ocean Data Portal and its capabilities.

The course is comprised of three sessions and each session is composed of several video presentations. Session 2, ODP Data Provider - Data Connect and Share in the IODE Ocean Data Portal V2, contains the following videos.

• Introduction to JBoss Application Server
• ODP V2 Data Provider Package Overview
• Technical and Operational Requirements
• Deployment Process
• Settings and Priorities
• Provider's Identification Rules

PowerPoint slides for each presentation are available for download from the main course page.

About the Ocean Data Portal:

• Formally established in 2007 as a program under the IODE and supported by the Partnership Centre for IODE Ocean Data Portal, Russian Federation
• Seeks to provide open and seamless access to marine data collections in an enabling and globally distributed environment
• Facilitates discovery, evaluation, and access to data
• Provides benefits to both data providers and data users
• Focuses on standards, technology, people, and capacity planning 

This is an introductory course for policymakers and funders and comprises slide presentations and a video. The course is organized into the following modules.

• Introduction to Open Science for Funders
• The Impact of Open Science
• Definitions and Terms used in Open Science
• Requirements of Horizon 2020 Regarding Open Access and Open Data 
• Creating Effective Open Access Policies
• Developing Open Data Policies

Suggested reading is also provided.

Available to view and download in PowerPoint format and available to download in text, PDF, and EPUB format on the slide preview pages for each module.

Provides a brief introduction to the main concepts of Open Science, discusses the rationale for Open Science and highlights the implications for the research lifecycle.

This video module is part of the Introduction to Designing Successful Open Access and Open Data Policies Course for policymakers and funders. It puts Open Access in the historical context of scientific publishing and explains the benefits and rationale.

Associated readings may be found for this topic at:  https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/learning/designing-successful-open-acce....

This slide presentation is part of the Introduction to Designing Successful Open Access and Open Data Policies Course for policymakers and funders. It provides definitions of the main terms used in Open Science, including Research Data, and Gold, Green, Gratis and Libre Open Access.

Available to view and download in PowerPoint format and available to download in text, PDF, and EPUB format at the provided URL.

Associated readings may be found for this topic at:  https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/learning/designing-successful-open-acce...

This slide presentation module is part of the Introduction to Designing Successful Open Access and Open Data Policies Course for policymakers and funders. It describes what an Open Access policy should cover and what makes a policy effective; provides a model Open Access policy; explains why policies of this type work and gives examples.

Available to view and download in PowerPoint format and available to download in text, PDF, and EPUB format at the provided URL.

Associated readings may be found for this topic at:  https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/learning/designing-successful-open-acce...

This introductory course is addressed to librarians at different levels and positions that are committed to supporting researchers and their research processes at their institutions and would like to gain an understanding of the implications of Open Science for them, the potential opportunities and possible challenges, and check on existing best practices to deal with them.

The course includes five sections:

• What is Open Science?
• What are the Benefits of Open Science?
• What are the Challenges for Open Science?
• What is in Open Science for Librarians?
• What to Do Next?

Each section may include videos, associated readings, and Open Science lifecycle diagrams.  

Learning outcomes:

The learning outcomes of this course are:

• Understand the relevance of Open Science in relation to research integrity, reproducibility and impact
• Identify the implications and opportunities for libraries in the development and support of Open Science
• Know existing initiatives and best practices on Open Science
• Identify suitable resources and tools to further develop library services on Open Science

Greater insight on how to implement Open Data and Research Data Management, Open Access, copyright and e-infrastructures into the scholarly lifecycle and grant proposal preparation, can be found in the other FOSTER courses and training resources.

This slide presentation covers the research data management life-cycle, data preservation concepts and processes, metadata for preservation, levels of digital preservation, what should be preserved, and institutional readiness.

Slides are available for download at the provided URL.

Video tutorial describing how to write a data management plan, for example for a research grant application to an Economic and Social Research Council. A data management and sharing plan can help you consider--when you design and plan your research--how data will be managed during the research process and shared afterward with the wider research community. 

Research benefits:

• Establishes how to collect and manage research data
• Helps keep track of data assets (e.g., when staff leave your institution)
• Identifies data support, resources, and services
• Plans for data security and ethical measures
• Prepares you for data request

For access to more UK Data Service video tutorials go to https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/use-data/tutorials.