Data Centre  

The BonaRes Data Centre merges data from soil research and provides it for general use. First and foremost it refers to research data from the BonaRes collaborative projects. Special attention is drawn to long term field experiments in Germany which contribute significantly to the analysis of long term soil changes. Soil data from the public sector will also be included like monitoring and research data from other sources.  


Interests of data collectors on the one hand and data user on the other hand are regulated within a data guideline. In any case, exploitation rights of data collectors are being respected. By allocating data licences, potential uses are clearly defined.


The provision of documented research data follows standardized forms which are part of an international networking data infrastructure. Data is registered first, which means it gets a so called DOI (digital object identifier) to therefore make it quotable. This ensures a long-time availability and the archiving of data. By registering, a description of data by metadata is also connected. The Data Centre complies with the DataCite-Standard. DataCite is a global consortium of libraries and information centres aiming at the facilitation of research data.


The Data Portal offers the possibility to search for local, temporal and addressed criteria within the data base of the BonaRes Data Centre. To structure the data base, the thesaurus AGROVOC is being used. AGROVOC is a multilingual, controlled vocabulary of FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and can be used for a structured search. Detailed information on research data can be received from metadata which is freely available in principle. Further options on visualization or on data download depend on regulations within the data guidelines.


The data infrastructure of the BonaRes Data Centre for recording of metadata (DataCite and INSPIRE), for registering, for archiving and provision of research data via the Data Portal is basically also available to other research projects for subsequent use of their research data.