Researchers and PIs are responsible for adding new datasets from their projects and campaigns to the Polar-AOD network’s portal, managed by the core group via GeoNetwork. GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially refenced resources; it provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an interactive web map viewer. Researchers can independently contribute by first registering on GeoNetwork. After logging in, you’ll find the ‘Contribute‘ option in the menu bar. Click on it, and then select ‘Add new record.’ You can find instructions for adding new resources in the Metadata Creation Manual available on the website. This manual is intended to be a guide for compiling and managing metadata records in the GeoNetwork system, an open source software used as a platform for cataloguing metadata in the Polar-AOD project.
The ISO19115 standard was chosen by the international scientific community to describe information related to geographically referenced data. It provides information related to the identification, extent, quality, temporal and spatial patterns, and distribution of the resource. The scheme of this standard specifies the elements that must be considered as a minimum (core) set to ensure validity and interoperability, which is achieved through the use of standard protocols, between different data and metadata management systems. This standard also provides an xml structure for metadata.
Polar-AOD also allows researchers to include their data in the catalog. If the data are already in repositories, researchers can add links to these repositories in the catalog’s metadata. For unpublished data, researchers can contact Polar-AOD at info@polaroad.net, and the team will upload the data to ERDDAP. ERDDAP is a data server that provides a straightforward way to download subsets of scientific datasets in common file formats and create graphs and maps.