Cynthia Parr @cydparrUS Department of AgricultureNational Agricultural Library11 January 2017

Public access to research results

at USDA

Credit: Phenocam Swan Lake Research Farm, MN

The Story

• committed to public access• PubAg is well along• Ag Data Commons in the process

of making USDA-funded data accessible

We are

The Story part 2

public access isn’t good enoughButTherefore we are

1. enhancing our platform2. establishing sound curation policies

and processes3. promoting machine-readability and

data stories4. seeking a sustainable business

model

Federal directives: Public access to open, machine-readable data

PubAg https://pubag.nal.usda.gov

• Launched 2014• Almost 50K full-text peer-reviewed articles• More than 1 million citations for other papers

• Will collaborate with US Forest Service Treesearch• Will expand beyond Agricultural Research Service full text• Will cooperate with the CHORUS publisher consortium• Will soon launch a redesign

Transform agriculture to deliver a 20% increase in quality production with 20% lower environmental impact by 2025

-- USDA Agricultural Research Service

Public access is not enough

Goals for USDA digital scientific data

Who WhatResearchers and funders Compliance with public access

Agencies Compliance with open data

Research (data submitters) Safe, citable place for data

Research (data users) Find and use awesome data

Ag Data Commons https://data.nal.usda.gov

DKAN http://nucivic.com/dkan/ PRO• Open source community• Drupal modules for basic

CMS functions • Can feed Data.gov• Basic metadata already

supported

CON• Not designed for scientific

data or scientists• No links to literature• No Digital Object

Identifiers• Doesn’t handle dataset

relationships• Metadata inadequate for

compliance checking & re-use

Use all this for some data intensive research

1. enhancing the platformAg Data Commons Pilot FY 2016

• Self-submission accounts (almost 100 now)• More than 240 datasets (104 harvested)• Distributed curation• Links to PubAg, tagged with NAL thesaurus terms• DataCite Digital Object Identifiers, ORCIDs, FundRef• Methods metadata, data dictionaries for re-use• Designed to feed Data.gov

2. Sound curation policies and processes• Who can submit?• What do we accept?• When do we assign DOIs?• What embargo periods are okay?• How much review of metadata

and data do we do?• Who reviews metadata and data?• How should data be organized? • When do we offer a group a

“collection”?

• Must we host all the data?• What can we automate?• How do we make things more

machine-readable?• When should datasets be versioned?• How do we handle preservation?• How much and what kind of data

storage do we need?• How do we avoid licensing and

“ownership” confusion?

Research productsInclude in the Ag Data Commons (or provide links)• Raw data files and/or Processed data files• Data dictionary or Readme

Do not submit with the data • Manuscript• Figures/tables from manuscript

Research productsInclude as resources (resource can be URL pointer)• Web database• Software• Source code/Scripts/Workflows• User manuals

Do not submit with the data • Presentations associated with the study• News articles or press releases• Related or cited data

JSON, RDF

Data dictionary

CSV, API, DB, code

3. machine-readability

16

It is still early

Effort is needed to create usable, scalable systems & linkable data

3. Data stories

From data.gov

Data-driven stories

To sum upcommitted to public accessUSDA

is public access isn’t good enoughBut

Therefore

Acknowledgements

Cynthia.Parr@ars.usda.gov

Susan McCarthy, Ursula Pieper, Erin Antognoli, Jon Sears, Qing Qu, Jeff Campbell, Jocelyn McNamara, Melissa Lohrey, Don Gourley, GovDelivery, Angry Cactus team

The PubAg team, especially Melanie GardnerUMD: Kerry Huller, Adam Kriesberg, Meghna

Sarin, Candice HoOther students: Jaylen Nathwani