WDS Member Highlight: World Data Centre for Soils

The World Data Centre for Soils (WDC-Soils) is a member of the World Data System and a leading provider of soil-related collections and information services. WDC-Soils is hosted by ISRIC – World Soil Information, an independent foundation that serves as a custodian of global soil information.

WDC-Soils’ mission is to ensure the long-term preservation and archiving of soil specimens, country documentation, and geo-referenced databases. Many of these resources are available freely online and can be used to support studies of environmental, societal, and economic sustainability.
WDC-Soils follows clear procedures and workflows for safeguarding, quality-assessing, standardizing, and serving soil data to the world, using FAIR principles. WDC-Soils also promotes open science, data literacy, and data stewardship among its stakeholders and partners.

WDC-Soils is a valuable member of the World Data System community. It is a leader in the field of soil science and its work is making a real difference in the world. Here are some of WDC-Soils’ accomplishments:

  • Developed the ISRIC Soil Data Hub: a web portal that provides access to various soil data products and services from ISRIC and other sources.
  • Created the SoilGrids system: a global gridded soil information system that provides high-resolution maps of soil properties and classes.
  • Launched the Global Soil Information Facilities project: a collaboration between ISRIC and other partners to develop a global infrastructure for soil data sharing and integration.

Operating across disciplines and borders, the World Data Centre for Soils liberates the potential of soil data to provide insights into local, regional, and global processes. Their commitment as a World Data System member to offering state-of-the-art soil data services propels innovative soil science with far-reaching benefits. Through a ceaseless focus on improvement, they expand access to soil information for researchers worldwide.

Member Highlight: DANS

Member Highlight: DANS

Member Highlight: DANS

The Dutch National Centre of Expertise and Repository for Research Data (DANS) is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). DANS helps researchers make their data available for reuse, enhancing the quality and efficiency of scientific research. DANS is one of the leading repositories in Europe and has earned the CoreTrust Seal as a trusted digital data repository. DANS hosts various data services, such as Data Stations, Data Vault, DataverseNL, EASY, and NARCIS, covering different disciplines and research infrastructures. DANS also shares its expertise on FAIR data, data management, data curation, and data archiving with researchers, research institutions, data professionals, and other archives.

https://dans.knaw.nl/en/

 

 

Member Highlight: The Odum Institute Data Archive

Member Highlight: The Odum Institute Data Archive

Member Highlight: The Odum Institute Data Archive

The Odum Institute Data Archive is a research data stewardship center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It has over 50 years of experience in data preservation and access, starting with the acquisition of the Louis Harris Data Center in 1965. It hosts one of the largest collections of social science data in the U.S., covering topics such as public opinion polls, vital statistics, census data, and more. It also manages and provides access to the UNC Dataverse, a web-based data repository that enables researchers to archive and share their own datasets. The Odum Institute Data Archive is committed to ensuring that the data assets in its care remain FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) and has earned the CoreTrust Seal as a trusted digital data repository. The Odum Institute Data Archive offers various services to assist researchers with data management, curation, sharing, and reproducibility.

https://odum.unc.edu/archive/