Report from the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

The American Meteorological Society held its  Annual Meeting in Austin Texas earlier this month, which gave Matt Mayernik and me the opportunity to hold forth on various aspects of data citation, peer review, etc.

Matt’s poster was based on current work with NCAR colleagues on ‘What Does Peer Review of Data Sets Mean and What Roles do Data Archiving and Quality Control Have in the Process?’ (attached). The poster compares/contrasts conventional peer review processes with data quality control processes in place at current NCAR data archives. It attracted interest from a number of delegates as well as the Editor of BAMS.

I presented on Geoscience Data Journal and PREPARDE, and Matt on the NCAR Data Citation Initiative to the  Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) strand of the meeting, which had several sessions around ‘Expanding Data’ and ‘Expanding Publications’. Several other speakers, including John Sandy of Alabama and Gloria Hicks of NSIDC, are working in compatible areas (see full program details  here) and there were some lively discussions, particularly in the breaks.

Other than that, there were some opportunities to further catch up on  EarthCube, the NSF-driven cyberinfrastructure project for the geosciences, which is of immense interest and potential importance for underpinning the future of data-driven research, particularly from North America. The other key development, from my point of view was the Town Hall meeting organised by the  AMS Board on Data Stewardship which is working on a wide-ranging position paper. Not only does this encompass data citation, encouraging good data management by producers, it is also looking at the status the ‘data scientist’ has within research institutions, and the influence of funders, policy makers and industry in all aspects of research data origination, use and management. It is simply the most ambitious mission I have yet to see from a learned society. I very much welcome this development and hope we have the opportunity to support its continuing progress.

  • Posted: 2013-01-22 10:35 (Updated: 2013-01-22 16:54)
  • Author: Fiona Murphy
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