Environmental Dataset Preparation Guides
This website contains a series of documents about preparing and publishing datasets for the environmental sciences and similar contexts. Topics include community-developed metadata standards, serialization and markup formatting guidelines, best practices for content in ecological synthesis datasets, and more. This documentation is maintained by the LTER Network and the Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) and all content has been developed and written in collaboration with this community of scientists, data managers, and repository users.
The purpose of these guides is to:
- Provide guidance for creating published data products that are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR, Wilkinson et al. 2016)
- Augment the schema documentation for the Ecological Metadata Language (EML, Jones et al. 2019)
- Promote the development and adoption of community-standard data harmonization practices, which will lead to improved data integration and synthesis science outcomes
To contribute to these documents or participate in the associated working groups, see the About page or the repository README. For more on the history of this effort, and access to earlier editions of the guides, see the History page.
The guides
| Date | Title | Description | Categories | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Data Package Design for Special Cases | published | ||
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Best Practices for Dataset Metadata in Ecological Metadata Language | draft | ||
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Sep 23, 2026 | Ecological community survey data (ecocomDP) | This guide covers how to format community survey and biodiversity data to the “ecocomDP” harmonized data model. The ecocomDP standard and associated tools are a community-supported project involving the LTER Network, NEON, and others. | draft |