NSF datanet partners update

EDITOR'S SUMMARY Attendees at the 2014 Research Data Access and Preservation Summit (RDAP14) heard an update on the DataNet project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and designed to bring together data research infrastructure organizations to support digital preservation, access, integration and analysis. Five project partners have received funding, each convening collaborating institutions and pursuing group goals. DataONE focuses on data preservation and metadata, distributed storage, usability and assessment, educational outreach, data discovery and interoperability. SEAD (Sustainable Environment Actionable Data) seeks to build a cyberinfrastructure for sustainability science, providing a repository, researcher network and virtual archive. Tools developed by Terra Populus will enable users to extract data from different sources to create custom combinations. The goal of the DataNet Federation Consortium is to support collaborative research and federated collections by putting together a national data infrastructure with client‐friendly metadata templates and bulk uploading to support long‐term management. The DataNet partners continue separate lines of research to build an effective cyberinfrastructure that will support sharing and preserving diverse scientific studies.