Access

Data access

The AusSeabed Data Hub aims to make seabed mapping data available to all using FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles, open technologies and communities of practice.

The FAIR principles were first drafted at an international scientific workshop in 2014, with the principles officially published in 2016 (Wilkinson et al., 2016)[1]. Since then, the principles have received worldwide recognition and been endorsed by international organisations including FORCE11, National Institutes of Health and the European Commission as an essential framework for sharing data and outputs in a way that would maximise use and reuse.

The FAIR principles are designed to:

·         support knowledge discovery and innovation both by humans and machines

·         support data and knowledge integration

·         promote sharing and reuse of data

·         be applied across multiple disciplines

·         help data and metadata to be ‘machine readable’, supporting new discoveries through the harvest and analysis of multiple datasets and outputs.

The AusSeabed Data Hub will make Survey Metadata and Data available via the ASB Portal (Geoscience Australia Portal ) on a Survey by Survey basis, via Geoscience Australia’s eCat (Product catalogue - Geoscience Australia ) and by linking to Contributing Data Hub’s metadata catalogues. In the case of the CSIRO Hub access is provided via the https://data.csiro.au/collections/ .

Survey Metadata is available via the ASB Portal (Geoscience Australia Portal ) on a Survey by Survey basis and from the Contributing Data Hub Provider metadata catalogues. In the case of Geoscience Australia this is eCat (ecat.ga.gov.au), and with the CSIRO (the first additional Contributing Data Hub it is the Data Access Portal (CSIRO Data Access Portal).

Access notes

Metadata from all available Surveys will have no access restrictions and are considered ‘open file’ unless otherwise negotiated. Individual data components (Raw L0, Processed L2, Published L3) or alternate formats for raw and processed Bathymetry, Backscatter and others data, however, may have embargoes, specialised licensing agreements or disclaimers. This information is included in the Survey metadata to aid discovery and provide contacts for seeking access.

[1] Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18