The Bering Sea Project Archive: a Prototype for Improved Discovery and Access Don Stott, Matthew S. Mayernik, Michael D. Daniels, James A. Moore, Steven F. Williams, and John Allison NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory, Boulder CO, USA, stott@ucar.edu Science-focused use case examples • Identify a geospatial region via data where certain parameters show specific features. • Ex. #1: Find the areas in a defined region where benthic biomass is high for walruses to feed • Ex. #2: Is the line between benthic and pelagic dominated ecosystem shifting? • Find information (data, publications, products) related to a geolocated event. • Ex. #1: Information related to a ship cruise • Ex. #2: Information relevant to under ice CTD data collected in the South Bering Strait vivo.eol.ucar.edu The Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL), as a partner in the NSF funded EarthCollab project, is using linked open data to support scientific collaboration and increase the discoverability and usability of scientific resources. The EOL proof-of-concept Arctic Data Connects web application interlinks datasets from the Bering Sea Project Archive at EOL across platforms and projects. It provides researchers the means to more easily find people, organizations, and resources that are relevant to their work, via semantic and linked data. The Bering Ecosystem Study (BEST) was an NSF sponsored program that provided researchers an opportunity to gain an improved understanding of the linkages between variations in Bering Sea ice cover and the biology of the waters and benthos beneath. A collaborating program, the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP), sponsored by the North Pacific Research Board, collected data in the same region at the same time in an effort to improve understanding and prediction of ecosystem changes related to anthropogenic and natural causes. Over the six-year period of the programs hundreds of multidisciplinary datasets from a variety of instrumentation and measurement platforms within thirty-one categories of research were processed and curated by the NCAR/EOL. The separate BEST and BSIERP data archives were brought together to form the Bering Sea Project Archive in 2010. The EOL organized and continues to maintain the Bering Sea Project Archive as the single source for all data from the combined efforts of the BEST and BSIERP programs. The Bering Sea Project Archive incorporating the BEST-BSIERP Data Archives http://beringsea.eol.ucar.edu Data Linkage with Derived Datasets NSF award numbers are used here to connect datasets and Principal Investigators. As more datasets receive DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers), the DOI will be utilized to link derived products. EarthCollab Data Structures Build ontology extensions for linking: • VIVO-ISF: People, organizations, publications • DCAT: data sets and catalogs • GCIS: Scientific instruments, platforms, projects • Local ontology development to fill gaps Yet to model: • Geospatial and temporal features • Parameters/variables • Use case specific features, e.g. ship tracks EarthCollab is funded by the US National Science Foundation EarthCube program, grants #1440293, 1440213, 1440181, PIs Matthew Mayernik, Mike Daniels, Dean Krafft, and Linda Rowan. Underlying Technology The heterogeneous products of oceanographic field programs such as the Bering Sea Project challenge the ability of researchers to identify which data sets, people, or tools might be relevant to their research, and to understand how certain data, instruments, or methods were used to produce particular results. Arctic Data Connects is employing the open-source semantic web software, VIVO, as the underlying technology to connect the people and resources of virtual research communities. VIVO is being leveraged to address connectivity gaps across distributed networks of researchers and resources and to identify relevant content, independent of location. http://vivoweb.org