Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30473618›Full record

ArticleBiodiversity data journal2018

A story of data won, data lost and data re-found: the realities of ecological data preservation.

Alison Specht, Matthew P Bolton, Bryn Kingsford, Raymond L Specht, Lee Belbin

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biodiversity data journal, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
2.2field-weighted citation impact, top 12% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.

Alison SpechtUniversity of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia University of Queensland Brisbane Australia.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2623-0854
Matthew P BoltonCorymbia Ecospatial Consultants, Canberra, Australia Corymbia Ecospatial Consultants Canberra Australia.
Bryn KingsfordStructured Data, Canberra, Australia Structured Data Canberra Australia.
Raymond L SpechtEmeritus Professor, Brisbane, Australia Emeritus Professor Brisbane Australia.
Lee BelbinAtlas of Living Australia, CSIRO, Canberra, Australia Atlas of Living Australia, CSIRO Canberra Australia.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8900-6203
Atlas of Living Australia · AUData61 · AUEmmaus Bible College · AUGeospatial Research (United Kingdom) · GBQueensland University of Technology · AU

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

This paper discusses the process of retrieval and updating legacy data to allow on-line discovery and delivery. There are many pitfalls of institutional and non-institutional ecological data conservation over the long term. Interruptions to custodianship, old media, lost knowledge and the continuous evolution of species names makes resurrection of old data challenging. We caution against technological arrogance and emphasise the importance of international standards. We use a case study of a compiled set of continent-wide vegetation survey data for which, although the analyses had been published, the raw data had not. In the original study, publications containing plot data collected from the 1880s onwards had been collected, interpreted, digitised and integrated for the classification of vegetation and analysis of its conservation status across Australia. These compiled data are an extremely valuable national collection that demanded publishing in open, readily accessible online repositories, such as the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (http://www.tern.org.au) and the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA: http://www.ala.org.au), the Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF: http://www.gbif.org). It is hoped that the lessons learnt from this project may trigger a sober review of the value of endangered data, the cost of retrieval and the importance of suitable and timely archiving through the vicissitudes of technological change, so the initial unique collection investment enables multiple re-use in perpetuity.

Indexed as

data conservationdata curationdata retrievallegacy datalong-term data accessibility

Identifiers

PMID30473618
PMCPMC6235994
OpenAlexW2900251101

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.