Bev was fed up. She was in the middle of working on her PhD thesis which relied on data from a large and ongoing animal study. When she went to the storage freezer to retrieve some samples for her analyses, she found nothing. Or rather, she found boxes upon boxes of Continue reading Inventory Overload
Data loss: while we can use the arsenal of technology at our command to guard against it, sometimes the fortresses we have built are not as failsafe as we believe them to be. Sometimes when data loss happens, we kick ourselves for not being prepared, not taking the extra time Continue reading The Best Laid Schemes of Backups and Redundancy…
Lee was an environmental chemist at a prestigious university. For the past few years, he and his department had been developing green technology to help eliminate environmental pollutants. By collaborating with several of the leading researchers in the field, he hoped to develop innovative techniques for speedily degrading a range Continue reading The Hard Truth about Hardware Failure
Every good researcher knows what a vital role data sharing plays in the data life cycle. So in a perfect world, the decision to share data would be an easy one to make. By effortlessly passing data on to someone else, you would receive all the spectacular rewards data sharing Continue reading Don’t Touch That – It’s Under Revision!
At first it seemed impossible, too amazing to be true, and she assumed she’d misunderstood. With the help of a translator, she was teaching a field course for students in a country whose native language she could not speak. Surely either she or the translator had heard incorrectly. But when Continue reading The Case of the Missing Research Protocol
A freshwater ecologist who studies natural phytoplankton communities had been working on a project for several years when unforeseen trouble cropped up and the still-incomplete project came to a standstill. Following days and weeks of pondering what to do about the obstacles that were hampering progress, she decided to put Continue reading File Organization System, Meet Collaborator’s File Organization System
Ecologists, as a group, seek out adventure, natural wonder, and, let’s face it, sometimes hardship. Rather than being deterred by remote locations and inhospitable environments, they are inspired. Speak to an ecologist, and you’re likely to find out very quickly about the particular location in which they conduct their research Continue reading Metadata? I thought you were in charge of that.