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The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data

Ecological research relies increasingly on the use of previously collected data. Use of existing datasets allows questions to be addressed more quickly, more generally, and at larger scales than would otherwise be possible. As a result of large-scale data collection efforts, and an increasing emphas...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Morris, Benjamin D., White, Ethan P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681786/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23785456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065848
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author Morris, Benjamin D.
White, Ethan P.
author_facet Morris, Benjamin D.
White, Ethan P.
author_sort Morris, Benjamin D.
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description Ecological research relies increasingly on the use of previously collected data. Use of existing datasets allows questions to be addressed more quickly, more generally, and at larger scales than would otherwise be possible. As a result of large-scale data collection efforts, and an increasing emphasis on data publication by journals and funding agencies, a large and ever-increasing amount of ecological data is now publicly available via the internet. Most ecological datasets do not adhere to any agreed-upon standards in format, data structure or method of access. Some may be broken up across multiple files, stored in compressed archives, and violate basic principles of data structure. As a result acquiring and utilizing available datasets can be a time consuming and error prone process. The EcoData Retriever is an extensible software framework which automates the tasks of discovering, downloading, and reformatting ecological data files for storage in a local data file or relational database. The automation of these tasks saves significant time for researchers and substantially reduces the likelihood of errors resulting from manual data manipulation and unfamiliarity with the complexities of individual datasets.
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spelling pubmed-36817862013-06-19 The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data Morris, Benjamin D. White, Ethan P. PLoS One Research Article Ecological research relies increasingly on the use of previously collected data. Use of existing datasets allows questions to be addressed more quickly, more generally, and at larger scales than would otherwise be possible. As a result of large-scale data collection efforts, and an increasing emphasis on data publication by journals and funding agencies, a large and ever-increasing amount of ecological data is now publicly available via the internet. Most ecological datasets do not adhere to any agreed-upon standards in format, data structure or method of access. Some may be broken up across multiple files, stored in compressed archives, and violate basic principles of data structure. As a result acquiring and utilizing available datasets can be a time consuming and error prone process. The EcoData Retriever is an extensible software framework which automates the tasks of discovering, downloading, and reformatting ecological data files for storage in a local data file or relational database. The automation of these tasks saves significant time for researchers and substantially reduces the likelihood of errors resulting from manual data manipulation and unfamiliarity with the complexities of individual datasets. Public Library of Science 2013-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3681786/ /pubmed/23785456 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065848 Text en © 2013 Morris et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Morris, Benjamin D.
White, Ethan P.
The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title_full The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title_fullStr The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title_full_unstemmed The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title_short The EcoData Retriever: Improving Access to Existing Ecological Data
title_sort ecodata retriever: improving access to existing ecological data
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681786/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23785456
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065848
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