Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R): Products and Services for the U.S. Research Fleet Community

Robert A Arko, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, NY, United States, Suzanne M Carbotte, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States, Cynthia L Chandler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States, Shawn R Smith, Florida State University, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Tallahassee, FL, United States, Karen I Stocks, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, United States and R2R Program Team
Abstract:
The Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) program is working to ensure open access to environmental sensor data routinely acquired by the U.S. academic research fleet. Currently 25 vessels deliver 7 TB/year of data to R2R from a suite of geophysical, oceanographic, meteorological, and navigational sensors on over 400 cruises worldwide. R2R ensures these data are preserved in trusted repositories, discoverable via standard protocols, and adequately documented for reuse. R2R has recently expanded to include the vessels Sikuliaq, operated by the University of Alaska; Falkor, operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute; and Ronald H. Brown and Okeanos Explorer, operated by NOAA.

R2R maintains a master catalog of U.S. research cruises, currently holding over 4,670 expeditions including vessel and cruise identifiers, start/end dates and ports, project titles and funding awards, science parties, dataset inventories with instrument types and file formats, data quality assessments, and links to related content at other repositories. Standard post-field cruise products are published including shiptrack navigation, near-real-time MET/TSG data, underway geophysical profiles, and CTD profiles. Software tools available to users include the R2R Event Logger and the R2R Nav Manager. A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is published for each cruise, original field sensor dataset, standard post-field product, and document (e.g. cruise report) submitted by the science party. Scientists are linked to personal identifiers such as ORCIDs where available. Using standard identifiers such as DOIs and ORCIDs facilitates linking with journal publications and generation of citation metrics.

R2R collaborates in the Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP) to strengthen links among regional and national data systems, populates U.S. cruises in the POGO global catalog, and is working toward membership in the DataONE alliance. It is a lead partner in the EarthCube GeoLink project, developing Semantic Web technologies to share data and documentation between repositories, and in the newly-launched EarthCube SeaView project, delivering data from R2R and other ocean data facilities to scientists using the Ocean Data View (ODV) software tool.