Searching & Accessing Data
Contributing Data
Why Use Data Portals
A new feature on ESS-DIVE! Researchers can now easily view project information and project datasets all in one place.
What is a Portal?
A portal is a collection of private or public datasets on a unique webpage. This webpage also supports additional text pages for describing any aspect of the data collection.
Typically, a research project's website won't be maintained beyond the life of the project and all the information on the website that provides context for the data collection is lost. ESS-DIVE portals can provide a means to preserve information regarding the project's objectives, scopes, and organization and couple this with project data files so it's clear how to use and interpret the data for years to come.
Portals also leverage ESS-DIVE's metric feature, which create statistics describing the project's datasets. Information such as total size of data, proportion of data file types, and data collection periods are immediately available from the portal webpage.
Check out our Portals Page to check out all public portals in hosted on ESS-DIVE or learn more about our Portal List on our Find Portals page.
Portal Uses
The biggest advantage to having a portal is that it elevates published datasets in ESS-DIVE. A portal increases the Findability (FAIR data principals) of published datasets by narrowing the available search pool. Portals can be accessed directly from ESS-DIVE's main menu where data users can browse through portal titles and descriptions that interest them.
Not only can you elevate the data collection, you can then use the freeform pages to add information about your data, such as stating why you created your selected data collection and bios for data authors.
Terminology check: A Data Contributor is someone who has prior approval to upload data on ESS-DIVE and has registered themselves as a Data Contributor with the ESS-DIVE Team.
Highlighting Data with Portals
Data Contributors can use portals to collect public data and create a research-themed webpage. This curated data collection will have data available for direct download, can provide insights about the significance of the collection, and can be shared with colleagues and broad audiences.
ESS Project Portals
Projects can collect their project-specific datasets into a unique portal and customize the portal's theme and structure according to the needs of that project. Portals enable projects to preserve their identity on ESS-DIVE as well as their data.
A project portal can use freeform pages to include information about:
- The project, funding program, and project partners
- Purpose of the project data
- Significant paper citations
- Authors bios
For projects, portals can also be used to report on performance by leveraging the metric feature (click here to see an example of portal metrics). Important statistics about the project's data are tracked on the metrics page including total data publications, number of data views and downloads, and the time span of data collection across the project.
Currently, project-based portals can only be linked to a single individual's ESS-DIVE account. The current infrastructure does not support project-based or group accounts.
Last modified 9mo ago