A workshop on FAIR Data Management for Long-term Biological and Omics datasets from Marine Stations was held at VLIZ in June 2019. Material from this workshop – lecture notes (including the demonstration and activity sessions) and some introductory material – can be accessed from our drive here. 

FAIR data should be the following:

1. Findable – they are archived in a community data repository, and a metadata record for the data is created in a publically-accessible data catalogue (usually this catalogue is part of the repository). The (meta)data receive a unique and persistent identifier so they can always be found.
2. Accessible – the metadata are publically accessible and downloadable at a machine2machine level, and should be accessible even when the data are no longer available. 
3. Interoperable – the data and metadata should be in a standard format and use standard vocabularies
4. Re-usable –  the conditions of re-use should be clearly stated, i.e. the data should have a licence. Provenance metadata must be include in the metadata record

The FAIR principles should be followed by the data creators – those who create the data, archive them, and create the metadata record – and the repositories that hold the data and the metadata records. The responsiblilty for ensuring that the metadata are rich, that standard vocabularies are used, that the licence is correct, that a working data link/contact details is provided, and that standard data formats are used (format of the files and format of the data within the files), is for the data creator. The responsibly for ensuring that the (meta)data records are machine readable, that the metadata use a machine-understandable ontology, that the metadata catalogue allows for a rich set of metadata to be created, and that the data and metadata records have a unique and persistent identifier (URL), is for the repositories.

The FAIR Data Primer written for the FAIR DM workshop summarises the FAIR principles for scientific data management and offers some useful general advice about the steps to follow in your FAIR data management.

Open Access means that the data or publications are free for anyone to find, download, and use. For data, "open access" and "re-usable" do not mean the same thing – data can satisfy the "re-usable" condition of FAIR but not be open access, as long as the conditions of re-use (or re-not-use) are clearly stated in the metadata record.

ASSEMBLE Plus participates in the Open Research Data Pilot initiative of Horizon2020, which promotes open access to research data generated by Horizon 2020 projects. The main pillars to the pilot are: developing a Data Management Plan (DMP), archiving your data, creating a dataset record in a catalogue, and providing open access to research data.

• The DMP of ASSEMBLE Plus is public material and can be found in the work package reporting page. In here we list the principles of our data management, archiving our data and metadata, standards we will adopt, and so on.
• For archiving data created under the umbrella of ASSEMBLE Plus, the Marine Data Archive (MDA) is to be used. Data can be archived elsewhere, especially if that is common for data from your scientific domain, but where possible the data should also be archived in the MDA to ensure its long-term survivability. The MDA is a file system for storing, updating, and sharing datasets between members of a team, and the dataset can then be made data public (the F and A in FAIR) by creating a metadata record for them (see next point).  
• For cataloguing the data, the Integrated Marine Information system (IMIS) should be used to create a metadata record. A record is created via a webform (aka "publishing" your dataset), and datasets that are catalogued in IMIS can be located anywhere – in the MDA or in any other archive.You can also use IMIS to assign a DOI to your dataset: see the links given here.
• Adding data to the MDA and creating a metadata record in IMIS are steps towards making data Interoperable, as from here the data can be incorporated into EurOBIS (and from there to OBIS, EMODnet, etc). Making your data interoperable requires that the (meta)data formats are standardised, but the advantages are that your data can be re-used by your fellow scientists and this can lead to more citations to you and your institute. VLIZ can help with the process of standardisation if that is required: send an email to data@embrc.eu if you wish to do this.
• If your data are already interoperable – e.g. they have already been published in an IPT – then we can use this IPT record to incorporate your data into IMIS.

 

When must your data or publications be Open Access?

• Refereed publications that include results funded by ASSEMBLE Plus (i.e. JRA and TA work) must be published in Open Access journals or journals that allow the PDF of the publication to be archived in the ASSEMBLE Plus Open Repository. See here for more information. To add your publication to 
• Data produced by ASSEMBLE Plus funding must be archived (MDA), catalogued (IMIS), and Open Access (CC-BY or similar licence). Opt-outs are allowed, and detailed information can be found in the H2020 Guidelines to the Rules on Open Access. For ASSEMBLE Plus this is allowed if:
  • the data contain sensitive information (e.g. personal, private, about a rare species,...) 
  • the data will be subject to Intellectual Property Rights (for example they will lead to a patent) 
  • making the data open access will harm the project goals (but this must be genuine harm!)
  • you wish to wait until you have published the data before making them public (with a maximum wait time of 2 years allowed)

 

As part of WP 4 of the ASSEMBLE Plus project, it has been agreed that the data resources produced in the ASSEMBLE Plus project will be accessible via an open access entry point. The advice given in this section is focussed on helping the JRAs do just that.  

Data management advice

1. Read the Data Management Plan (the latest version will always be on the work package reporting page) – this describes the principles that have been agreed upon and which you will need to follow.
2. Ensure that as you create your data (raw, processed, final), you follow these principles, and in particular those concerning: the metadata you include with the data; the vocabularies you use in the meta(data); the formats of the data in your datafiles; the formats of the datafiles.
3. Archiving your data it has been agreed that all JRA data will be archived in the Marine Data Archive (MDA), but this does not preclude archiving the data elsewhere as well. Data storage in the MDA ensures, at a minimum, its long-term preservation, but it can also be used as the main archive for your data if you so wish. In principle, the raw data should always be archived – the raw data are the fundamental of your scientific research – as should be the final version of the data – cleaned, rich with metadata, and ready for (re)use. However, as the formats, sizes, and useability of raw and processed data vary from JRA to JRA, this is something that each JRA can discuss within themselves.
4. Creating a metadata record in IMIS (the Integrated Marine Information System) for your archived data is a must. This metadata record can point to whichever version of the data you wish to make public. Normally this would be the data that are re-useable, i.e. the final version of the data. In an IMIS record you can point to the datafile(s) stored in the MDA or those stored in any other archive, whichever you deem more useful to the user. With a few exceptions (see the "opt-outs" above), the data should be given a CC BY licence and hence the download link should lead to a open access dataset. 
5. Fill in this spreadsheet to inform VLIZ of the datasets you will have, or which you already have. (VLIZ leads the data management WP.)
   • As soon as you have an idea of what datasets you will be producing, you should add them to the spreadsheet
   • As soon as you have created a raw dataset, update its entry in the spreadsheet
   • As soon as you have archived your data and created a metadata record, add that information to the spreadsheet: all final parameters, values, types, URL(s) to the dataset or the name of the archive(s) where it is stored, the IMIS "dasid" (=dataset id), etc. 
6. Inform VLIZ (data@embrc.eu) that you have updated this spreadsheet.  
7. When you have published your results – refereed, conference proceedings, or internal reporting – and wish to add that publication to the ASSEMBLE Plus publications catalogue, please send the citation of the publication and a PDF of the article to VLIZ (data@embrc.eu). Remember, refereed publications must be Open Access. 

To add data to the MDA

For technical questions, send an email to mda@vliz.be; for other questions, send an email to data@embrc.eu.

The steps to follow

1. To add your data to the MDA, you first need an account: register here and mention that you require access to the "ASSEMBLEPLUS" and "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folders.
2. Read the policy document and the user manual, both of which can be found in the main menu of the website. The MDA is not particularly difficult to use, especially if you are just storing data there.
3. When you log on, you will see the folders you have access to: your personal folder (a default) and the ASSEMBLEPLUS folder, in which you will find the "JRA# Data" folders that you need to put your data into. There is also an "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folder, and its pupose is explained below – at first you will only use the "ASSEMBLEPLUS" folder.
4. You can make subfolders from your JRA# Data folder, e.g. "raw" and "processed", but even with this please remember to include that information in the filenames. 
5. Upon initial upload of your datafile, it will go into a "quarantine" folder.  
6. After uploading a file you will be required to fill in a metadata form via this webform. If you need to upload multiple files that can have the same metadata, you can "apply a template", as described in the manual, to avoid having to create the same metadata form multiple times. 
7. Once you have filled in all the mandatory parts of this metadata form, you can then click on the icon to "archive" the file, selecting the specific directory you want to archive it in (i.e. Archive/ASSEMBLEPLUS/JRA# Data/..)
8. Note: the metadata you add in the MDA are not added to the IMIS metadata catalogue. These MDA-metadata are rather used to help the search system of the MDA itself, so users can find data within the MDA (i.e. when logged on). These metadata are not visible outside the MDA, and so are not public.
9. Once your files are uploaded and out of quarantine, please email data@embrc.eu with the details. Also remember to update the JRA data spreadsheet with the relevant information. 
10. Your files are now in the MDA but they are not public. To make them public, see below.

General advice about organising files

• Please keep your datafiles understandable, e.g. give the files meaningful names (what is in the file, is it raw or processed, what version is it, etc: some file-naming advice can be found in the DMP [go here]), and keep related files together in a subdirectory or zipped up (it is acceptable to zip up files that belong together and upload the zip file). 
• Please also include a README file in each (sub)directory/zip file to describe what is in there, and what each file contains – think of this as a user guide to your files.
• When a user downloads your data, they do not get the metadata record together with the data, neither that which you created in the MDA, nor that which you will later create in IMIS (although clearly they can also print out the IMIS record). Therefore, it is good practise to also include metadata with your files, either inside the datafiles or as a separate file – in this case ideally a CSV file where necessary information are tabulated, but a text file (.txt) is acceptable. PDF or Word documents are not acceptable. 

 

Making data public

In order for datafiles in the MDA to be open access, i.e they can be downloaded directly from the IMIS record (see below for instructions on creating this record), it is necessary that the files are placed in a "public" folder. Therefore you need to move the files you want to make public into your ASSEMBLEPLUS public/JRA# Data/.. folder. 

Note that you can create an IMIS metadata record even if you are not making your data (fully) open access, and if that is the case you do not need to – yet – move your (all) data to the "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folder.

Bearing in mind that the next step is to create a metadata record that will link to the data in "ASSEMBLEPLUS public", you need to consider whether you want to create a metadata record for a single file, or for multiple files. Which to do depends on your datafiles, and this can only be decided by you. Consider the general advice that a single data download should be self-standing, i.e. all the information that a user requires, to understand what is in the data and how (far) they can be used, should be present. If you have a data file plus a separate metadata file and a README file, then clearly you have multiple files that are associated with this metadata record. (You can, of course, zip these up into a single file.)

• Single: Once you have moved your single file to the public folder, note down its link: do this by clicking on the file and then the "Show metadata" icon above the file listing. On the webpage you then see, copy the value in the field "Direct link"
• Mulitiple: Multiple files can be attached to a single metadata record in two ways: 
  1. Move all your files to a single folder that only has those files in there, and note down the name of that folder and the number of files therein, so you can include this information when creating your metadata record
  2. Link your files together using a "fileset" (this is explained in the MDA manual). This fileset will sit in the folder you made it in, and when you click on the file (in the right part of the MDA view) you will be able to select the icon "Show metadata" (located in the icon bar above the file listing) to see its metadata. A new page opens: from there copy what is written in the "Direct link" as this will need to be specified when you create your metadata record
• Raw vs processed: do you offer the raw or the processed, or both, to be downloaded? There is no general advice here, as it depends on what the difference between the two are, how useful the raw are, how big they are, and so on. It is possible to "fileset" link raw and processed files in the MDA, and so offer both to be downloaded, and it is also possible to specify more than one URL for the data download link if the data are archived elsewhere. 

 

To create an IMIS record

An IMIS metadata record should be created for all data that you want to make public. If the data you wish to create the record for are located in the MDA, these are the data which you have moved to the "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folder, as explained above. But it is also possible to create a metadata record for data archived elsewhere, if that is more appropriate. 

Creating an IMIS record is done via this webform. It is pretty straightforward, and each field has an "i" button which you can click for more information and examples. A few comments specifically for ASSEMBLE Plus:

• Although formally not all the fields in the webform are mandatory, we request that you consider them to be, and only leave blank those that cannot apply to your type of data. Use the picklists offered rather than entering values free-form.
• In the description sections, please describe the dataset(s) the record is for, not the overall project it was created under: the circumstances of collection, creation, collation of the data should be described, and if not otherwise explained in a publication, the provenance should also be described.
• Please remember to select a licence – CC BY for open access – and to include full contact information. If you are offering access upon request, make sure you have indicate a name and email address for the dataset contact (in the "People" section of the webform). 
• To deal with the issue that people move on with time but data remains in an archive forever, consider using an alias as your contact email – for example – and ensure that there is always someone on the receiving end of that alias.
• In "The dataset" section of the webform, you have a choice of: giving the URL(s) to the data, saying where they are located in the MDA, or uploading a dataset via the webform itself. This final option is intended for those who are archiving very little data and just the once, i.e. TA users rather than JRA users. If your data are archived in the MDA, see the advice given above as to what MDA direct line or folder names you need to write down here. If your data are located in multiple other archives (e.g. in different formats, or if you have one link for a data downloader and another link for a data explorer), you can list all of them in the space on the form. 
• If the data you wish to make public are already published in an IPT, IMIS can collect the necessary information from that IPT. However, ideally you would still fill out this webform, including the minimum information, and add a note that we should use "this IPT [UIRL]" to harvest the necessary information.
• In the "Projects" section, say "ASSEMBLE Plus".

 

Once you have submitted the webform, you will get a confirmation email with a copy of the webform. After some potential back-and-forth over email, your record will be created and you will be sent the "dasid" of your record. Please then check your record to ensure that it is as complete as you wanted it to be!

IMIS also offer the option to create a DOI for your data. This can be requested via a check box on the webform. Please note that a more rigorous checking of the metadata and the data formats are necessary to receive a DOI.

If you wish your data to be incorporated in EurOBIS or WoRMS, check the relevant box at the bottom of the webform, in the "Data Integration" section. For this incorporation, your data need to be in a standard and interoperable format, and hence this may require additional work on your side on your data. However, VLIZ can offer much advice and tools to use to help in this process. 

 

To add your publication to the ASSEMBLE Plus collection

This section is focussed on those ASSEMBLE Plus marine stations who have, or want to have, datasets catalogued in the ASSEMBLE Plus collection in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS), and/or want to archive their data in the Marine Data Archive (MDA).

As part of WP 4 of the ASSEMBLE Plus project, it has been agreed that long-term ecological datasets (LTEDS) and omics datasets from our marine stations will be catalogued and made accessible via a single access point: the ASSEMBLE Plus collection in IMIS. We stress that these datasets do not belong to ASSEMBLE Plus, rather we are advertising them, and ideally providing direct access to them for the marine scientific community. Additionally, the subset of these datasets that are interoperable (i.e. have a standard format for the data and metadata) will be accessible and analysable via a set of ASSEMBLE Plus VREs (virtual research environments).

To kick-start this process, the datasets that were already catalogued in IMIS and came from the ASSEMBLE Plus marine stations became the ASSEMBLE Plus collection in IMIS. These records are searchable via the data catalogue search page. These records were the subject of the workshop on FAIR Data Management for Long-term Biological and Omics datasets from Marine Stations that is mentioned near the top of this page. Working together, VLIZ (WP 4 lead) and the ASSEMBLE Plus marine stations are in the process of making these data records FAIR. Those datasets that are, or can become, interoperable will be a particular focus of this work. 

In this section we give advice about the FAIR data management of these datasets with these particular purposes in mind. Each marine station will have its own data management procedures, and what is stated here is not intended to replace those procedures. 

Data management advice

1. Read the ASSEMBLE Plus Data Management Plan (the latest version will always be on the work package reporting page) – this describes the principles that have been agreed upon for data management in ASSEMBLE Plus, and which will therefore be useful for you to know about.
   Note: the requirement that ASSEMBLE Plus data are Open Access does not apply to datasets being discussed here, i.e. those which the marine stations produce outside of the ASSEMBLe Plus project. While we would like to encourage everyone to follow this policy, we will not enforce it. 
2. Ensure that as you create your data (raw, processed, final), you follow the data mangement principles of your station/institute, and in particular those concerning: the metadata you include with the data; the vocabularies you use in the meta(data); the formatting of the data in your datafiles; the types of datafiles to provide. 
3. Archiving your data it is good policy to archive data in a public, community archive: this is the very first step towards making your data FAIR, and ensuring it is never lost to science. ASSEMBLE Plus is using the Marine Data Archive (MDA) as a common archive to ensure the long-term preservation of our marine data, while archiving elsewhere also is allowed (especially where that is more suitable for a discipline). In principle, the raw data should always be archived – the raw data are the fundamental of your scientific research – as should be the final version of the data – cleaned, rich with metadata, and ready for (re)use. However, as the formats, sizes, and useability of raw and processed data vary from project to project this is something that you will need to decide on a case-by-case basis.
4. Creating a metadata record in a data catalogue for your archived data is a must if you want your data to be Findable. Note: findable not mean immediately accessible, since you can set the use licence in the metadata record. ASSEMBLE Plus is cataloguing its data in the ASSEMBLE Plus collection of the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS). An IMIS metadata record can point to whichever version of the data you wish to make public (raw, final, data in the MDA, data archived elsewhere...). 

To add data to the MDA

Anyone can archive their data in the MDA. If you wish to do so for your institute's (or your own) datasets, please read the advice here. For technical questions, send an email to mda@vliz.be; for other questions, send an email to data@embrc.eu.

First, however, who should not read this secton?

• If you do not want to archive your data in the MDA, skip to "To create an IMIS record"
• If you do want to archive your data in the MDA, but it is a very small number of datasets and you won't do this again, then you can instead create an IMIS record and at the same time upload a dataset that we can archive in the MDA for you. Also skip to "To create an IMIS record"
• It is nonetheless useful to read this section, so you know what it is that we will do for you. Sections General advice about organising files and Making data public will be especially useful. 

 

The steps to follow when adding data to the MDA yourself

1. To add your data to the MDA, you first need an account: register here. If you wish to add your data to the ASSEMBLE Plus collection you will need to request access to the "ASSEMBLEPLUS" and "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folders in your registration form. If you wish to archive your data elsewhere (e.g. a folder for your institute), then say that instead. Which you chose depends on how heavily you will use the MDA as an archive. It is in any case always possible to move, copy, or link files across folders. 
2. Read the policy document and the user manual, both of which can be found in the main menu of the website. The MDA is not particularly difficult to use.
3. When you log on, you will see the folders you have access to: your personal folder (a default) and e.g. the ASSEMBLEPLUS folder. There is also an "ASSEMBLEPLUS public" folder, and its pupose is explained below. If you have an institue folder, you will see that one instead (or as well). 
4. If you want to store your data in ASSEMBLEPLUS, please use its MarineStations subfolder. If you are storing your data in your institute's folder, note down where you have put the data, for later reference. 
5. If you have many datafiles to archive, you may consider making additional subfolders to hold them in. 
6. Upon initial upload of your datafile, it will go into a "quarantine" folder.  
7. After uploading a file you will be required to fill in a metadata form. If you need to upload multiple files that can have the same metadata, you can "apply a template", as described in the manual, to avoid having to create the same metadata form multiple times. 
8. Once you have filled in all the mandatory parts of this metadata form, your file will move to the folder you have indicated for it.
9. Note: the metadata you add in the MDA are not added to the IMIS metadata catalogue. These MDA-metadata are rather used to help the search system of the MDA itself, so users can find data within the MDA (i.e. when logged on). These metadata are not visible outside the MDA, and so are not public.
10. Your files are now in the MDA but they are not public. To make them public, see below.

General advice about organising files

• Please keep your datafiles understandable, e.g. give the files meaningful names (what is in the file, is it raw or processed, what version is it, what institute or project owns it, etc: some file-naming advice can be found in the DMP [go here]), and keep related files together in a subdirectory or zipped up (it is acceptable to zip up files that belong together and upload the zip file). 
• Consider iincluding a README file in each (sub)directory/zip file to describe what is in there, and what each file contains – think of this as a user guide to your files.
• When a user downloads your data, they do not get the metadata record together with the data, neither that which you created in the MDA, nor that which you will later create in IMIS (although clearly they can also print the IMIS record). Therefore, it is good practise to also include metadata with your files, either inside the datafiles or as a separate file – in this case ideally a CSV file where necessary information are tabulated, but a text file (.txt) is acceptable. PDF or Word documents are not acceptable. 

 

Making data public

In order for datafiles in the MDA to be open access, i.e they can be downloaded directly from the IMIS record (see below for instructions on creating this record), it is necessary that the files are placed in a "public" folder. The ASSEMBLEPLUS folder is not public, and normally if your institute has a folder it will also not be public. For data in ASSEMBLEPLUS, the public folder is "ASSEMBLEPLUS public". The data that you placed in "ASSEMBLEPLUS" or your institute's folder and which you wish to make public, should now be moved or copied to "ASSEMBLEPLUS public/MarineStations", unless your institute does indeed have a public folder and you are allowed to use that. 

Bearing in mind that the next step is to create a metadata record that will link to the data, you need to consider whether you want to create a metadata record for a single file, or for multiple files. Which to do depends on your datafiles, and this can only be decided by you. Consider the general advice that a single data download should be self-standing, i.e. all the information that a user requires, to understand what is in the data and how (far) they can be used, should be present. If you have a data file plus a separate metadata file and a README file, then clearly you have multiple files that are associated with this metadata record. (You can, of course, zip these up into a single file.)

• Single: Once you have placed your single file in the public folder, note down its link: do this by clicking on the file and then the "Show metadata" icon above the file listing. On the webpage you then see, copy the value in the field "Direct link"
• Mulitiple: Multiple files can be attached to a single metadata record in two ways: 
  1. Place all your files to a single folder that only has those files in there, and note down the name of that folder and the number of files therein, so you can include this information when creating your metadata record
  2. Link your files together using a "fileset" (this is explained in the MDA manual). This fileset will sit in the folder you made it in, and when you click on the file (in the right part of the MDA view) you will be able to select the icon "Show metadata" (located in the icon bar above the file listing) to see its metadata. A new page opens: from there copy what is written in the "Direct link" as this will need to be specified when you create your metadata record

• Raw vs processed: do you offer the raw or the processed, or both, to be downloaded? There is no general advice here, as it depends on what the difference between the two are, how useful the raw are, how big they are, and so on. It is possible to "fileset" link raw and processed files in the MDA, and so offer both to be downloaded, and it is also possible to specify more than one URL for the data download link if the data are archived elsewhere. 

 

To create an IMIS record

An IMIS metadata record should be created for all data that you want to make public. If the data you wish to create the record for are located in the MDA, follow the steps explained above. But it is also possible to create a metadata record for data archived elsewhere, if that is more appropriate. 

Creating an IMIS record is done via this webform. It is pretty straightforward, and each field has an "i" button which you can click for more information and examples. A few comments specifically for ASSEMBLE Plus:

• Although formally not all the fields in the webform are mandatory, we request that you consider them to be, and only leave blank those that cannot apply to your type of data. Use the picklists offered rather than entering values free-form.
• In the description sections, please describe the dataset(s) the record is for, not the overall project it was created under: the circumstances of collection, creation, collation of the data should be described, and if not otherwise explained in a publication, the provenance should also be described.
• Please remember to select a licence – CC BY is for open access – and to include full contact information. If you are offering access upon request, make sure you have indicate a name and email address for the dataset contact (in the "People" section of the webform). 
• To deal with the issue that people move on with time but data remains in an archive forever, consider using an alias as your contact email – for example – and ensure that there is always someone on the receiving end of that alias.
• In "The dataset" section of the webform, you have a choice of: giving the URL(s) to the data, saying where they are located in the MDA, or uploading a dataset via the webform itself. This final option is intended for those who are archiving very little data and just the once. This may or may not include you. If your data are archived in the MDA, see the advice given above as to what MDA file or folder names or URLs you need to include here. If your data are located in multiple other archives (e.g. in different formats, or if you have one link for a data downloader and another link for a data explorer), you can list all of them in the space on the form. If you are uploading data via the webform, note the 10 Mb limit. Larger files can be downloaded by us if you make them available (e.g. dropbox or WeTransfer). Please zip files before transfer.
• If the data you wish to make public are already published in an IPT, IMIS can collect the necessary information from that IPT. However, ideally you would still fill out this webform, including the minimum information, and add a note that we should use "this IPT [UIRL]" to harvest the necessary information.
• In the "Projects" section, indicate at a minimum "ASSEMBLE Plus".
• In the "Data Integration" section: if you want your dataset to contribute to any of the data systems there list (in which case, the data will need to be in an interoperable format), click on its button and you will be contacted to start this integration processes.

 

Once you have submitted the webform, you will get a confirmation email with a copy of the webform. After some potential back-and-forth over email, your record will be created and you will be sent the "dasid" of your record. Please then check your record to ensure that it is as complete as you wanted it to be!

IMIS also offer the option to create a DOI for your data. This can be requested via a check box on the webform. Please note that a more rigorous checking of the metadata and the data formats are necessary to receive a DOI.

If you wish your data to be incorporated in EurOBIS or WoRMS, check the relevant box at the bottom of the webform. For this incorporation, your data need to be in a standard and interoperable format, and hence this may require additional work on your side on your data. However, VLIZ can offer much advice and tools to use to help in this process. 

 

This section has been moved to the TA pages