ESA Wksp 17: How to Manage Ecological Data for Effective Use and Reuse

Pre-Workshop Assessment:

Have you ever:

• Shared your data with colleagues? yes
• 
  
• Been asked for your data by a researcher outside your collaborative group? no
• Deposited your data in a publically accessible archive / repository?no
• Used someone else’s data?yes
• Searched for data within a publically accessible archive / repository?yes
• Used metadata to describe your data?yes, but not according to any official standard
  
  
  
  
  
  

Post-Workshop Assessment:

Do you think you will be more likely to:

• Use a repository to store your data?
• Yes
• Definitely
• Yes
• Yes
• yes
• yes
• Yes
• Yes
  
  
• Use a repository to share your data?
• Yes
• yes 
• Yes
• yes
• Yes
• Yes
• Yes, however promotion and access to these will be important
  
  
• Use someone else's data from a shared repository?

Yes
Yes
Yes
yes, but not sure how much than before
yes
yes
I think so, now that I have more ideas where to look.
Yes

• Use the data life-cycle when planning your research project?

Perhaps
yes
yes
yes
yes, helpful in planning and making things a bit less overwhelming

Absolutely
Yes, or at least think more before starting about what I would like to do in the end with it and how to best accomplish those goals

• Use metadata to describe your data?

Yes, definitely.
yes
Yes
yes
yes
yes, given access to proper formats
yes

• Use increased data protection mechanisms?

yes
Not sure how to yet...
yes
yes, if I can find affordable external hardrives
Yes
Actually, was happy to learn I'm already using the 3 recommended methods

yes
Workshop Feedback:

Please use this space to highlight elements you found to be valuable, provide suggestions for improvements and include any other comments on the workshop.
I liked the diversity of resources (people who are experts at different types of data management) available to us. Next time I would like working groups where we actually work on our own data. This would take way more personnel but would be very very helpful. I have walked away from this meeting with a better idea of what I would like to do with my data, but very little practical knowledge. How, exactly, do I use my software to do what I want to do? 
    Metadata!
It was great to learn about the many tools available for data management plans and creating metadata. I would like to learn about R tools/code for database stuff -- but maybe would be too specific or require a specific, R-oriented workshop? Also, would be helpful to learn more about file naming practices. I totally agree with keeping original data sacrosanct, but sometimes you discover data entry errors as you go, so what's the best way of back-correcting files and make sure any corrections make it into all the analyses down the road.