The Environmental Data Initiative: connecting the past to the future
through data reuse
Abstract
1. The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) is a trustworthy, stable data
repository and data management support organization for the
environmental scientist. In a bottom-up community process EDI was built
with the premise that freely and easily available data are necessary to
advance the understanding of complex environmental processes and change,
to improve transparency of research results, and to democratize
ecological research. 2. EDI provides tools and support that allow the
environmental researcher to easily integrate data publishing into the
research workflow. 3. Almost ten years since going into production, we
analyze metadata to provide a general description of EDI’s collection of
data and its data management philosophy and placement in the repository
landscape. We discuss how comprehensive metadata and the repository
infrastructure lead to highly findable, accessible, interoperable, and
reusable (FAIR) data by evaluating compliance with specific community
proposed FAIR criteria. 4. Finally, we review measures and patterns of
data (re)use, assuring that EDI is fulfilling its stated premise.