DataONE: Facilitating eScience through collaboration

Objective: To introduce DataONE, a multi-institutional, multinational, and interdisciplinary collaboration that is developing the cyberinfrastructure and organizational structure to support the full information lifecycle of biological, ecological, and environmental data and tools to be used by researchers, educators, and the public at large.

Setting: The dynamic world of data intensive science at the point it interacts with the grand challenges facing environmental sciences.

Methods: Briefly discuss science’s “fourth paradigm,” then introduce how DataONE is being developed to answer the challenges presented by this new environment. Sociocultural perspectives are the primary focus of the discussion.

Results: DataONE is highly collaborative. This is a result of its cyberinfrastructure architecture, its interdisciplinary nature, and its organizational diversity. The organizational structure of an agile management team, diverse leadership team, and productive working groups provides for a successful collaborative environment where substantial contributions to the DataONE mission have been made by a large number of people.

Conclusions: Librarians and information science researchers are key partners in the development of DataONE. These roles are likely to grow as more scientists engage data at all points of the data lifecycle.