Researchers connect through data sharing

"In order to promote open access to research data, many funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), require that research data generated by publicly-funded projects be made publicly available. In addition, some journals require authors to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers as a condition of publication. Researchers can now more easily comply with these policies by utilizing the services of Penn State’s Data Commons. Data Commons was developed to provide a resource for data sharing, discovery, and archiving for the Penn State research and teaching community. 'A commons is a place you go to share something,' explained Maurie Kelly, director of the Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA) and one of the Data Commons initiators. 'What we’re sharing here is data, a service that is now expected of many researchers who publish work funded by these agencies, so it’s easy to see how the Data Commons helps to make that connection.' ... The Data Commons currently hosts data from researchers across the University including the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Education; from departments such as rural sociology and ecosystem science and management; as well as from institutes and centers including the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, and the Metabolomics Core Facility ... Other services provided by the Data Commons include creation of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and metadata development. Metadata is the key to understanding and accessing data so the Data Commons staff will be providing metadata training for researchers at Penn State in the coming months.  The Data Commons also is working on special projects that feature Penn State data. For example, the Data Commons is working with The Arboretum at Penn State to make its plant records available to visitors through a mobile application."