We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The EcoData retriever: improving access to existing ecological data.
- Authors
Morris, Benjamin D; White, Ethan P
- Abstract
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.
- Publication
PloS one, 2013, Vol 8, Issue 6, pe65848
- ISSN
1932-6203
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0065848