Erin Robinson, the Information and Virtual Community Director for the Foundation for Earth Science, the management arm of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (@ESIPFed), says that earth science matters to all of us. For example, when Hurrican Sandy devastated areas of the country, responders needed information on flood zones and what hospitals were available.
ESIP is a cross-cutting community of application developers,
researchers, and big data centers comprised of about 1000 technology practitioners working together on common issues around earth science data and information. In order to support member contributions and collaborative work, ESIP built a non-traditional publishing platform, the ESIP Commons, which organizes member-produced content. Beyond structured input, the ESIP Commons also provides the option to license under Creative Commons and a suggested citation allowing community recognition and easy material reuse. Recently, the Data Citation Guidelines for Data Providers and Archives were picked up and resued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)—a huge success.
The Drupal installation profile for the ESIP Commons will be available on Github in the coming weeks. And if you are interested in repurposing the Commons for your own group, please contact Erin at erinrobinson@esipfed.org.
