Burgeoning Data Repository Systems, Characteristics and Development Strategies: Insights of Natural Resources and Environmental Scientists

TL;DR

This paper explores how natural resources and environmental scientists navigate diverse data repositories, their concerns, and perceptions, proposing strategies and a novel approach for dynamic environmental data exploration.

Contribution

It provides insights into scientists' data use behaviors and introduces a top-down method for improved search, browsing, and visualization of environmental data.

Findings

Scientists face challenges in data discovery and integration.

Perceptions vary on the usefulness of different repository features.

A new top-down approach enhances data exploration capabilities.

Abstract

Nowadays, we have the emergence and abundance of many different data repositories and archival systems for scientific data discovery, use, and analysis. With the burgeoning data sharing platforms available, this study addresses how natural resources and environmental scientists navigate these diverse data sources, what their concerns and value propositions are towards multiple data discovery channels, and most importantly, how they perceive the characteristics and compare the functionalities of different types of data repository systems. Through a user community research of domain scientists on their data use dynamics and insights, this research provides strategies and discusses ideas on how to leverage these different platforms. Further, it proposes a top-down, novel approach to search, browsing, and visualization for dynamic exploration of environmental data.