ESIP Biological Data Cluster (BDS) Primer Guide
1 Introduction
This is still a work in progress and only presented here for the purposes of receiving feedback. This message will be removed when the Primer Guide has been officially published.
To paraphrase the MARCO-BOLO Project Data Management Plan, a primary challenge with biological data is that it comes in many flavors. For example, it may include evidence of past or present organisms based on physical samples, chemicals, organic molecules, sound, or images. By using standards to organize and share data efficiently, biologists can turn this variety of data types into a strength rather than a challenge when dealing with biological data.
This Primer Guide
The lists of standards discussed in these Primer guidelines is not comprehensive and is based on the standards included in the original Primer. If you would like to recommend standards for inclusion in future versions, please see the associated GitHub repository.
Audience
The target audience for this Primer Guide is anyone interested in working with biological data, from data collection, to data sharing, and data management. We hope this Primer Guide will provide useful context for using biological standards.
In designing this guide, we focused on a few key values.
Helping People Climb: We want to help people find resources about data standards. We were students once too; we know how rarely this value is held within a conventional science education.
Always Feeding Back: Information and standards develop too quickly to regularly publish guidance in a journal. You can let us know immediately what isn’t working or what is wrong via GitHub issues. We’re excited to collaborate with you to improve this guide!
Transparent: Sometimes resources are confusing until you understand the journey of how it was created. Having experienced this ourselves, we want to share the conversations that helped us build this guide.
Background on the Cluster
The ESIP Biological Data Standards Cluster formed in 2020 to maximize data relevance and utility for understanding changes in biodiversity over time. The cluster’s focus has expanded to include more aspects of biology beyond biodiversity, acknowledging that biological data may be useful for many facets of Earth science. To accomplish this, the cluster encourages awareness and shared understanding of biological data standards by facilitating community building and information sharing via guidance, documentation, and training for the biological data community.
How to contribute to this Primer Guide
If you would like to suggest changes or additions to the guide, please use GitHub issues to document your request.
Translations
Currently, we have the capacity to offer this guide only in English. However, users can get a rough translation using Google Translate. Just drop the page’s url in this service.