THE PETDB DATA COLLECTION: IMPACT ON SCIENCE

PetDB is a digital data collection that archives, manages, and makes accessible online an integrated set of geochemical and petrological data for ocean floor igneous and metamorphic rocks. Since its debut on the web in 1999, PetDB has revolutionized data access for the igneous geochemistry community and dramatically advanced the utility of geochemical data to the benefit of researchers and educators. PetDB has allowed its users to search for data relevant to their research or project at the level of individual data points, and to download, within minutes of starting a query, a customized dataset comprising and integrating data from hundreds of scientific articles that would have taken weeks or months to compile manually.

PetDB's success, its impact on science, education, and the development of Geoinformatics, has impressively validated the scientific rationale for creating and maintaining this data collection. Since 2002, more than 150 articles in the peer-reviewed scientific literature have cited PetDB as the source for datasets upon which new hypotheses and discoveries are based. Many of these publications are high-impact papers, including fundamental contributions regarding the chemical and mineralogical composition and dynamics of Earth's mantle, the generation and evolution of continental and oceanic crust, melt transport phenomena, and global geochemical seawater budgets. The thematic variety of publications citing PetDB demonstrates that the data system has been applied to the widest range of scientific problems and benefited research across disciplines.

In this presentation, we will highlight a range of studies that have generated new insights and discoveries based on the use of the PetDB dataset.