Evaluating the Data and Service Ecosystem: Implications for Successfully Building EarthCube and Beyond

Abstract:

Interoperability, discoverability, and simple accessibility all play a role in the overall success of NSF’s EarthCube program and for the research community as a whole. As we discuss new technologies and solutions to build integrated, interoperable systems to address big data questions in the geosciences, we find ourselves on far shakier ground than expected.

As part of the BCube open web harvesting effort, we have undertaken a metadata and web service documentation retrospective across a broad range of repositories and service platforms. Based on a preliminary characterization of over a million documents, we highlight some of the issues contributing to this shaky ground, from incomplete metadata records, ambiguous identifiers, and limited service descriptions and the implications of these issues on data provenance, reusability, reproducibility, and the promise of open data.

Finally, we discuss potential paths forward. Attention is paid to those efforts that help codify and promote good community practices. From this foundation, with both data and the web services built on them, we can move forward on the promises inherent in EarthCube.