The Australian Antarctic Data Centre (AADC), which is responsible for long-term management of Australia’s Antarctic data, has recently become a ‘recommended repository’ for the Nature journal Scientific Data.
This journal aims to make research data more widely available and reusable, by publishing detailed descriptions of how data is produced and what quality-control experiments were performed.
AADC Manager Dr Ben Raymond said that the Data Centre’s new repository status would help promote the Australian Antarctic program’s resources and give more credit to the researchers who create and share data.
“Gathering research data in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean can be a long and tedious process,” Dr Raymond said.
“It may take many years of work to accumulate the data needed to advance our understanding of the icy continent and its influence on the rest of the world.
“This new affiliation means that anyone lodging data with the AADC can also consider publishing a data paper; in essence an extended description of the data, giving extra exposure to their work and highlighting its value to the broader scientific community.”