Session programme

Earth science research has become increasingly collaborative. Researchers work together on data, software and algorithms to answer interesting research questions. Teams also share these data and software with other collaborators to refine and improve these products. As data volumes continue to grow, researchers will need new platforms to both enable analysis at scale and to support the sharing of data and software.

Software is critical to the success of science. Creating and using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) fosters contributions from the scientific community, creates a peer-reviewed and consensus-oriented environment, and promotes the sustainability of science infrastructures.

This session will look at the role of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), cloud-based architecture solutions, metadata and other user interfaces to support information sharing, scientific collaboration, scientific reproducibility and analytics at scale solutions.

Digital data, software and samples are key inputs that underpin research and ultimately scholarly publications, and there are increasing expectations from policy makers and funders that they will be Open and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Open, accessible, high-quality data, software and samples are critical to ensure the integrity of published research and to facilitate reuse of these inputs in future scientific efforts. In Europe, adherence to the INSPIRE directive becomes gradually more enforced by national legislations, affecting also the data lifecycle in Earth and Environmental Sciences.

These issues and challenges get addressed at increasing pace today, with journals changing their policies towards openness of data and software connected to publications, and national, European and global initiatives and institutions developing more and more services around Open and FAIR data, covering curation, distribution and processing. Yet, researchers, as producers as well as users of data, products, and software, continue to struggle with the requirements and conditions they encounter in this evolving environment.

An inclusive, integrated approach to Open and FAIR is required, with consistent policies, standards and guidelines covering the whole research data lifecycle, addressing also basic legal frameworks e.g. for intellectual property and licensing. At the same time, the research community needs to further develop a common understanding of best practices and appropriate scientific conduct adequate for this new era, and could still better share tools and techniques.

This session solicits papers from researchers, repositories, publishers, funders, policy makers and anyone having a story to share on and further evolution of an integrated, Open and FAIR research ecosystem.

Our global societies are facing many complex and interlinked challenges such as climate change, sea-level rise, water and food security, uncontrolled spread of infectious diseases or finding tools for sustainable development of our dwindling mineral and petroleum resources. Environmental and Earth system sciences have a significant role to play in these challenges but will require the integration of scientific data, software and tools from multiple, globally distributed resources to unlock their potential to contribute. The preconditions for interdisciplinary research are set by existing national- and continental-scale research infrastructures and e-infrastructures (e.g., EOSC, ENVRI, EPOS, EarthCube, IRIS, UNAVCO, AuScope, etc.). We now need to foster their convergence and develop innovative and FAIR data and software, as well as integrated services to enhance the efficiency and productivity of researchers as we scale up to more complex challenges upcoming. Thereby, some problems will require new solutions such as next-generation computing at exascale.
This session solicits papers from different fields of expertise in the Environmental and Earth system domain (research and e-infrastructures, repositories and data hubs, interdisciplinary data users, global initiatives etc.), who are working to support tackling the existing and upcoming challenges. We also invite papers from those who are working towards the next generation infrastructures who can point up the practical challenges, perspectives, and potential solutions related to creating an open and collaborative ecosystem of research and e-Infrastructures that will support the next phase of Environmental and Earth system science research at exascale.

Public information:
(solicited presenter: Alice-Agnes Gabriel, gabriel@geophysik.uni-muenchen.de)

In recent years, the number of Earth and environmental research data repositories has increased markedly, and so has their range of maturities and capabilities to integrate into the ecosystem of modern scientific communication. Efforts such as the FAIR Data Principles, the CoreTrustSeal Certification for the trustworthiness of research data repositories, and the Enabling FAIR Data Commitment Statement have raised expectations we have towards the capabilities of research data repositories. How do we know which ones meet these benchmarks and future expectations? What are the challenges and appropriate strategies?

This session seeks submissions from any research data repository for Earth and environmental science data. It aims to showcase the range of practices in research data repositories, data publication and the integration of data, software and samples into the scholarly publication process. The session invites repositories to discuss challenges they are facing in meeting these community best practices and expectations for maturity.