Support and online material

Support

SIOS-KC offers help and services related to preparing metadata and data in accordance to FAIR standards. We support you e.g. when choosing a repository, receiving a DOI number, or choosing the license.

You can go through our online material that can help you to better manage your data and to learn how to use the SIOS services.

SIOS-KC and the Data Management Working Group offer also online and physical training courses and workshops.

In case of any questions or help needed, please do not hesitate to contact our data management team directly (see menu to the right)!

Online material

How-to use SIOS services

• Lectures on youtube
  • A routine on how to correctly store and manage data
  • How to make a good data management plan

Material from SIOS core data workshops

• SIOS Core data
• Improving data interoperability and reuse under SAON’s Roadmap for Arctic Observing and Data Systems
• Monitoring of weather and climate on Svalbard
• SIOS Core Data as Analysis Ready Data supporting Science for Service and Society

Material from previous courses

• Data management course series 2021 (pdf, videos on youtube)
  • SIOS Data Management System – an overview/Data Management Plan
  • How to encode data as NetCDF-CF using Python and R
  • How to work with Rosetta to convert tabular CSV files til netCDF-CF
  • How to create Darwin Core Archive for biological data
  • SIOS Data (core data, SESS report data, access call data)
  • How to publish scientific data
  • Nansen Legacy tools for data management
  • How to use and contribute to the Observation Facility Catalogue

Short tutorial videos

These videos were made by Luke Marsden, UNIS, in the frame of Nansen Legacy Data Management. They are great resources for anyone who's data should contribute to SIOS.

Why researchers should publish their data

Why research data should be FAIR

The video gives some good and bad examples of how to publish your data, and why it is in your interest as the data creators to publish your data in line with these principles.
Paper mentioned in the video: Wilkinson et al. 2016

Where should you publish your data?

The video covers why you should use some data centre's rather than others, how data access portals work, and the problem with including data just as supplementary material to a paper.

SIOS Data Access Portal

The video introduces the SIOS Data Access Portal. It discusses:

• What it is
• Why it is useful for any researcher working with Arctic data
• How you can get data through it
• How you can make your data available through it

 

An introduction to NetCDF files

The video introduces you to NetCDF files

Using python to get data out of a NetCDF files

This video is a tutorial on how to get data out of a NetCDF file using xarray in Python. In this example, a depth profile of Chlorophyll A data from a CTD cast is used.

• How to get an overview of the file, and how to dump the data into a CSV or XLSX file.
• The video is 14 minutes – but it will take you less time to do this yourself!
• You do not need to be an expert in Python to do these things! No prior experience required.

 

How to protect your research data from a cyber attack

• Are your data secure if there is a cyber attack on your institution?
• And what about other ways that your data could go missing?
• Where and how should you be storing your data?

 

Create NetCDF file in Python for beginners

Do you know how to create a NetCDF file? Using xarray in Python, it might be easier than you think. Don't worry, you don't need to be an expert in Python!

This video will go through how to convert a depth profile of data in an Excel file to a NetCDF file, that is compliant with the *CF and **ACDD conventions.

 

How to get data out of a NetCDF file using R

Do you want to know how to get data out of a NetCDF file? Know a little bit of R - not much, just enough to open RStudio or similar?

Then have a look at this video! Sit through this and you'll be able to get data out of NetCDF files in minutes in future.

How to log metadata on arctic expeditions

This video shows how metadata are logged in the Nansen Legacy project. Hopefully, it can provide you with some inspiration on how you can log data in your own work.

• Use a spreadsheet template generator to record all samples and sampling activities:  Nansen Legacy Excel Template Generator
• Label all physical samples
• Publish all the metadata to SIOS: Nansen Legacy tools
• How this all makes it easier to publish FAIR data later.

 

Darwin Core Archives - biologists and geologists look here!

This video explains why everyone interested in species data, including geologists who want to log fossil species, should be using Darwin Core Archives, what they are, and how to create them.

Create NetCDF file using R

Do you use R programming? This video is a code-along tutorial on how to create a NetCDF file using the RNetCDF package in R.

Training courses

SIOS offers a series of data management training courses, both online and physical. They can be held as an add-on to a workshop or as stand-alone course. You can follow open webinars offered regularly via our webpage or you can request a course by contacting our information officer (information@sios-svalbard.org)

Go to training course page