Do you want to practice and improve your data wrangling skills? Do you want to make precious data accessible to researchers worldwide?
Five to ten Champion Grants (of 500-1000 $) are available (starting July 1st) to QCBS graduate students and postdoctoral fellows working to rescue biodiversity data.
For any questions, please contact data@qcbs.ca.
What is data rescue?
“The identification, preservation, and sharing of valuable data and associated metadata at risk of loss” (Bledsoe et al. 2022)
Older data is frequently stored on personal computers, on physical media such as CDs, or paper, making it inaccessible to the scientific community. Properly documenting the data
with metadata, cleaning the data to make sure it does not contain errors and follows certain standards, and sharing the data in an openly available online repository, allows people to re-use the data in new and sometimes unexpected ways.
Who can be involved in data rescue?
A small team of up to five graduate students can work together to rescue data; however, a single person is often sufficient.
It also important for the rescuer(s) to have access to the “data custodian”–the person with intimate knowledge of how and the context in which the data was collected, or at least a resource which can be used to ensure that metadata can be rescued and effectively re-used.
What type of data can be rescued?
The data must be relevant to biodiversity science, such as essential biodiversity variables (Kissling et al. 2018), drivers of biodiversity change, nature’s contributions to people, or perceptions of biodiversity.
- The data must be localized to Quebec, Canada.
- The rescue data must not be a product of your own research as data sharing is now a requirement for publication in most journals.
- The data can be associated with a wide variety of sources, including but not limited to academia (articles, theses, reports, unpublished data), NGOs, government, and private sector.
- The data must have been collected in an ethical manner and with all necessary permissions.
- Information on how the data was collected must be retrievable.
- Bonus points if there is a high potential for re-use, or if the data addresses gaps in Quebec’s biodiversity data (ex: https://pollocklab.github.io/blitz-the-gap/#challenges).
How can I get started?
If you would like to rescue some data but do not know what data are available for rescue, you can reach out to QCBS research professionals. We can help you contact a data custodian (a person holding data).
If you want to develop skills to help you clean and manage data, consider participating in the Living Data Project courses offered online by the Canadian institute of ecology and evolution. QCBS research professionals are also available to assist you if you have any questions.
Eligibility
All QCBS graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are invited to apply. Applicants must have the following:
- Active and full-time graduate student or postdoctoral fellow status;
- Enrolled in one of the QCBS partner universities;
- Supervised by a QCBS coresearcher.
We acknowledge the important input from the northern communities and will actively prioritize projects that include previously established relationships with First Nations and indigenous communities.
Application requirements
In a PDF document, please include :
- Group: Names, institutions (QCBS geopole)
- Data source: current storage format
- Data custodian
- Name
- Organisation (if applicable)
- Involvement with the data collection
- Data description:
- What data was collected
- Where was the data collected
- Do we know how the data was collected
- Explain why you believe this data is worth being rescued. Mention here if the data is at risk of being lost.
- Explain why you believe you are the right person or team to rescue the data.
- Grant amount: the dollar amount that you believe to be fair compensation for the proposed data rescue.
Deadline
Rolling deadline. Submit when ready.
Evaluation
Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Application completeness (includes the items listed above)
- Priority of the data gap(s) to be filled
- Feasibility of the proposed rescue
- Relevant skills and level of motivation of the rescue person or team.
Note that the final grant amount can depend on the anticipated difficulty of the proposed data rescue.
Obligations
Award recipients must:
- Share the data in an open, freely accessible, and permanent online repository with a note on the financial contribution of the QCBS
- Produce a short Beagle blog post documenting their data rescue experience
Award transfer
Half of the amount will be transferred once the grant is evaluated, approved, and accepted by the recipient(s).
The second half of the amount will be transferred once the data has been shared in a open, freely accessible, and permanent online repository.
For QCBS student and postdoctoral fellow members outside of McGill University, the award will be transferred directly to the supervisor of the lead applicant, who will reimburse the awardees. QCBS student members at McGill University will be awarded by direct deposit (*Different procedure for Postdoctoral fellows, contact finance@qcbs.ca for further details).
References
Bledsoe, Ellen K., Joseph B. Burant, Gracielle T. Higino, et al. 2022. “Data Rescue: Saving Environmental Data from Extinction.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 289 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0938.
Kissling, W. Daniel, Ramona Walls, Anne Bowser, et al. 2018. “Towards Global Data Products of Essential Biodiversity Variables on Species Traits.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 2 (10): 1531–40. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0667-3.
