SUPPORTING EQUITABLE SCIENCE WITH OPEN AND ETHICAL DATA COMMUNITIES: THE NEOTOMA PALEOECOLOGY DATABASE (Invited Presentation)

This presentation will focus on efforts by Neotoma to support an equitable geosciences future through technology and global community building. Global geosciences efforts are increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary, however, the geosciences community is not reflective of the communities within which it operates or studies. The increasing drive towards open science, and advancements in geoinformatics have the opportunity to radically transform the culture of geosciences, but they also present the possibility of further entrenching the status quo should these technologies and data remain out of reach.

The Neotoma Paleoecology Database, and related efforts have been driven by a global community of researchers since the 1980s when the first collective efforts were organized around the COHMAP project. Since this time work has focused on developing and enhancing a global network or researchers, establishing and communicating data standards for the paleoecology community, developing clearly defined vocabularies, and providing opportunities for training and education through the development of educational modules and workshops to a global community.

Advances in equity can only happen within an open and ethical framework. Thus, Neotoma continues to enshrine the values of open data and software, with a recognition that the tools we use to undertake science and the data we provide have the opportunity to entrench existing paradigm. Through FAIR and CARE principles Neotoma is revisiting principles of radical openness by addressing issues of data-colonialism, while providing opportunities to bring in new research communities through efforts to build Machine Learning models to reduce the barrier to entry to the Neotoma data ecosystem.