KNOXVILLE—The College of Communication and Information at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will receive $2.73 million over the next five years as part of a $15 million accomplishment based renewal of the National Science Foundation’s DataONE project.

DataONE stands for Data Observation Network for Earth, a National Science Foundation program that seeks to develop the cyber-infrastructure linking research data collected by environmental scientists to libraries and laboratories around the world and see that it's effectively used.

UT researchers include School of Information Sciences Professors Suzie Allard (DataONE co-principal investigator) and Carol Tenopir (DataONE working group co-lead).  Bruce Wilson, who holds a joint appointment with UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and UT research associate Mike Frame are also part of the Phase II team.  The principal investigator for DataONE Phase II is William Michener of the University of New Mexico.

“Having the opportunity to build on what was accomplished during Phase I of DataONE is very exciting,” said Allard. “Phase II will allow us to take our work to the next level by exploring important data management sociocultural issues and to share our findings with the scientific community beyond DataONE.”

In announcing its decision to renew DataONE, NSF gave the following example of the accomplishments achieved during Phase I of the project: 

"As with the proverbial canary in the coal mine, birds serve as an indicator of the health of our environment. Many common species have experienced significant population declines within the last 40 years. Suggested causes include habitat loss and climate change, however to fully understand bird distribution relative to the environment, extensive data are needed.

"Through a collaboration of DataONE and multiple partners, bird occurrence data collected by citizen scientists has been combined with land use data to allow researchers to map over 300 bird species against important environmental factors. With this information, they were able to more accurately assess the degree of protection required for each species and the responsibility of public land agencies."

During Phase II, DataONE will:

• significantly expand the volume and diversity of data available to researchers for large-scale scientific discovery;
• incorporate innovative features to improve data discovery and further support reproducible and open science; and
• establish an openly accessible online education series to support global participation and training in current data techniques and perspectives.

Phase II will continue to engage, educate and grow the DataONE community. It also will seek user input to ensure intuitive, user-friendly products and services and work to ensure the long-term sustainability of DataONE services.

“NSF’s decision to provide an accomplishment based renewal of the project is a testament to the outstanding work of everyone involved in DataONE,” said CCI Dean Mike Wirth. “Our DataONE team is looking forward to building on their many accomplishments as they move into Phase II of the project.”