Combining the ease and flexibility of data handling in spreadsheet software with the power of having access to well-structured data can boost the reuse of data within collaborative research projects. Ecological research is becoming increasingly cooperative with research groups using common experimental and/or observational platforms. Sharing data allows them to address larger scale and transdisciplinary questions. However, ecological research lags behind in implementing available standards for data storage and exchange (including Darwin Core or Ecological Metadata Language (EML) for metadata). One of the reasons for not applying standards may be that the majority of datasets produced in ecological research is small enough to be easily and comfortably managed in spreadsheet software programs than in the emerging editors for structured data.
We therefore use a Ruby on Rails web application (BEFdata) to import data, as well as metadata, from a workbook consisting of five sheets. This approach allows offline data gathering onsite, and online, within platform, data curation and amalgamation. It minimizes the need to use wizards by allowing import, export, and re-import always from the same workbook. Providing EML structured export of metadata facilitates data sharing across repositories.
Results/Conclusions
The BEFdata portal is open source software currently used by three cooperative research platforms, the European (http://china.befdata.biow.uni-leipzig.de) and Chinese (http://159.226.89.107) groups associated to the Biodiversity – Ecosystem Functioning (BEF)-China project (German Science Foudation, FOR 891) respectively, and the functional biodiversity project FunDivEUROPE (http://fundiv.befdata.biow.uni-leipzig.de). The European instance is the longest in use (since 2011) and currently comprises of 32 projects, 101 users, and 115 datasets. The BEFdata portal focuses on stages in the data life cycle when raw data is not yet published, when it is still subject to changes and manipulation in spreadsheet programs and naming conventions are evolving. It can be used as long term data archive but also facilitates publishing mature datasets to larger archives.