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How to publish your data with TERN

Sharing your data to ensure provenance and promote re-use and citation—in other words, making it FAIR—just became a whole lot easier with the launch of a new, streamlined ISO compliant version of our data submission tool, SHaRED.

TERN’s data submission tool, SHaRED, allows ecosystem scientists to easily submit datasets into TERN’s secure data repository where they can be retrieved by others to create new science, new knowledge and educational tools.

The latest version of SHaRED has new features aimed at making data publishing as easy as possible for researchers:

  • complete redesign of the metadata form to make it more user friendly and intuitive;
  • be compliant to ISO 19115-3 metadata standards to improve Interoperability;
  • log in using the Australian Access Federation (AAF) single sign on or Google ID;
  • directly upload files up to 100 MB; and
  • link your data via several web services such as WMS, WCS, WFS and OpenDAP.

Quick and easy, but secure

Intuitive features and drop-down menus enable data submission into TERN in typically less than 30 minutes.  Despite the speed of submission, SHaRED does not compromise on the collection of the structured metadata which increase the chances of people finding your data.

The new SHaRED allows users to:

  • use controlled vocabularies to add GCMD Science Keywords, ANZSRC FoR classifications, sampling frequency, instruments used, observed properties, units of measure
  • add multiple bounding boxes to describe where data were collected;
  • add vertical coverage to capture depth and altitude information;
  • capture data lineage information;
  • provide ORCID IDs for all contributors; and
  • add additional publications and resources associated to the data.

Your data made FAIR

SHaRED supports the FAIR data principle of describing data with rich metadata (ISO-standard UUID) using controlled vocabularies and assigned globally unique Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to make your data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.

When uploading your data, SHaRED provides you with a simple interface to help you write structured metadata (in a similar way to other systems such as DRYAD and DataONE).  Once submitted, your data will be assigned an open-access licence (international Creative Commons) and a citation to help others acknowledge its re-use.

Discovery and retrieval of community-submitted data via TERN are equally as intuitive as submission. Users can search for data and their related metadata in the TERN Data Discovery Portal, and data extraction is simple and in a format suitable for uploading into research software such as statistical packages.

Help us make SHaRED even better

Since the launch in 2016 of version 1, SHaRED has been used to curate, publish, and archive almost 100 datasets from individual researchers, government agencies, including Parks Australia.  Their experiences in publishing their valuable data with TERN have been integral in the development of the latest version of SHaRED.

But we’re not finished yet, and we intend to further improve SHaRED’s functionalities by adding more vocabulary terms; increasing flexibility to add additional data authors and organisational information; and adding support for multiple GPS coordinate reference systems (geodetic datum).

In the meantime, we invite you to explore the new improved SHaRED, have a go at submitting your data, and let us know what you think via esupport@tern.org.au.

If you need help, take a look at our help documentation or drop us an email at esupport@tern.org.au.

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