General concepts, including a definition of datasets, incentives to publish data, and licences for data publishing will be elaborated so that to define and compare several routes for data publishing. MOBILISE will survey, develop and implement novel methods and workflows for collection data publishing, visualisation, dissemination and re- use in the form of Linked Open Data MOBILISE will investigate on relevant topics: (1) supplementary information and data sets of research articles published in public data
repositories with resolvable Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) (e.g. DOIs); (2) Data Paper, i.e., a specific, stand- alone publication describing a particular dataset or a collection of datasets, or (3) integrated narrative and data publishing through online import/download of data into manuscripts. It will also contain detailed instructions on how to prepare and peer review data intended for publication. Special attention will be given to existing standards, protocols and tools to facilitate data publishing. A separate section will describe most leading data hosting/indexing infrastructures and repositories for biodiversity and ecological data.. Suitable open access journals will be used as a testbed for publishing collection data in the form of standardised descriptions and taxon checklists. A generic semantic model and implementation of machine-readable and harvestable information of taxonomic specimen features will be developed. Furthermore, by introducing specimen level PIDs, occurrence data will be comprehensively linked to collection objects.

Objectives for Year 1:

  • Widen the number of participants, thus increasing the coverage of expertise of the group. This is necessary to provide a reliable insight of the existing data publication pipelines.
  • Define chair and co-chair(s) of the group.
  • Prepare a WG meeting in the framework of the MOBILISE Kickoff meeting in Sofia
  • Begin a landscape analysis of the most exploited data publication pipelines, especially as far as primary biodiversity data are concerned

Objectives for Year 2:

  • Understanding where it is more feasible to act to improve the rate of data publication, both on scientific journals, and on digital platforms as the GBIF.
  • Publishing a position paper on the opportunities and limits of existing data publication pipelines, and the role of MOBILISE in enhancing data publication.
  • Understanding how to improve current practices in citing data papers, given that often the object cited is the repository, and not the data set, thus lowering the added value deriving from data set publication.
  • Discussing the role of PIDs for link occurrence data with collection object.
  • Prepare a WG meeting in the framework of the next MOBILISE meeting in Poland.

Objectives for Year 3:

Planning a protocol for academic editors and data publishers

It aims at increasing published data quality and quantity. The idea is that of promote high data quality in scientific publications, together with a serious control of proper citation of datasets.

For more info please visit https://osf.io/j6psx/ .