Research data management in ecology: a practical approach for long-term projects

Effective management of ecological research data can insure the security and accessibility of data that cannot be collected again under the same conditions and plays a key role in every aspect of the research project from experimental design to publication. Commercial relational database management software, developed primarily for business applications, does not provide an adequate solution for long-term scientific data management. An archive file format provides the standard around which a data file management system is implemented. The system works within the parameters of existing components of the operating system software. Data filters and data engines are used to communicate data to and from applications. This paper documents this working approach to research data management in use on the Sevilleta LTER project