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International Networking

Schopf calls for better collaboration to fight climate change

Jennifer Schopf, director of International Networks at Indiana University, went to the Environmental Data Summit (EDS) at the University of California, Davis this summer to advocate for greater data sharing.

Since science and scholarship are now closely linked, sharing data has become the cornerstone of how climate scientists do their work today. But absent a structure for high-level data exchange, Schopf argued, global scientific collaboration and data synthesis remain constrained.

Recognizing this, the National Research Council has called on the US climate modeling community to ramp up partnership efforts and increase software and data infrastructure support. To support better data sharing, the National Science Foundation now requires data management plans for all submitted proposals, and evaluates them as part of its merit review.

“The outcome of a funded project isn’t just a publication anymore—it’s the data and everything that went into it,” Schopf said.

The first hurdle to managing and then sharing scientific data is to archive it—but that’s the easiest part, Schopf noted. Other challenges include finding and trying to decipher someone else’s data.

Effective collaboration based on data sharing also calls for a new way of thinking. Instead of relying on a publication paradigm, Schopf suggested scientists look to software releases as a model for disseminating their data.

“Having the right metaphors in your head changes how you think about the process around data sharing, and changes how you talk about what you’re working with,” Schopf said. “Data should be treated like a changeable, growing, living thing, as we would when we add in a feature to a piece of software.”

Since scientists often share data with the general public, the recent shift toward applied funding was a central theme in Schopf’s message at the EDS.

“If you can’t come up with a way your science is being used by someone other than just you, then you probably can’t get it funded,” she noted. “Twenty years ago that wasn’t the case, and this trend is only going to increase.”

A key for scientists seeking to make research accessible to the general public is to learn how to talk so data makes sense to a lay-audience.

“In some states, it doesn’t make sense to get into an argument about climate change and possible causes,” Schopf explained. “But you can frame the discussion around changes everyone has seen – for example, by noting that the growing season has shifted in time, or that migratory patterns are changing and may affect the hunting season soon.”

What’s more, reconceiving data more holistically will reinvigorate science, helping researchers make significant gains. 

“These tools for sharing will change the science questions we are asking,” Schopf concluded.

And to meet the rising challenge of global climate change, that’s a necessary step.