Numerous papers report the effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms and communities, but it has been difficult to compare the results since the carbonate chemistry and ancillary data are often reported in different units and scales, and calculated using different sets of constants.

In response to this problem, a data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification initiated by the EU projects EUR-OCEANS and EPOCA is now resuming in the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project “Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC)”.

If you are a scientist publishing on the biological response to ocean acidification, you will likely be contacted in the future. The OA-ICC thanks you in advance for sharing your data, it is a great way to get more cited!

Goal of the data compilation

The goal of the OA-ICC data compilation is to gather published data on the biological response to ocean acidification (carbonate chemistry, biogeochemical processes and other ancillary data) and to make them available to the scientific community in a coherent format and with a citable DOI. The data is archived at the data publisherPangaea. As part of the effort, the carbonate system variables are recalculated in a consistent way. Authors are always contacted to quality-check imported data sets before final archiving.

Operation and data collection process

The OA-ICC data compilation is maintained by Ms Yan Yang, Data Curator for ocean acidification data based at the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science (Xiamen University, China; Directors: Profs Minhan Dai and Kunshan Gao), under the supervision of Dr Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, France (OA-ICC focal point for data management).

Yan is extracting data directly from tables or figures in published papers, or contacting authors to collect data which is not readily available in the papers. If you are a scientist publishing on the biological response to ocean acidification, you will likely be contacted by Yan in the future. We are strongly encouraging you to share your data, it is a great way to get more cited (see e.g., Piwowar, 2007). If you have any concern or question please do not hesitate to contact Yan (yangyan(at)xmu.edu.cn). We look forward to working with you on this effort!

Further information

More information, including a list of data sets and a link to the data portal, is available here: http://tinyurl.com/oaicc-data.

The data compilation is described in the following article:

Nisumaa, A.-M., Pesant, S., Bellerby, R. G. J., Delille, B., Middelburg, J. J., Orr, J. C., Riebesell, U., Tyrrell, T., Wolf-Gladrow, D. & Gattuso, J.-P., 2010. EPOCA/EUR-OCEANS data compilation on the biological and biogeochemical responses to ocean acidification. Earth System Science Data 2(2): 167-175. Article.

Additional reference:

Piwowar H. A., Day R. S. & Fridsma D. B., 2007. Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PLoS One 2:e308. Article.

Contacts

• Yan Yang, Data curator for ocean acidification data, State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, China, yangyan(at)xmu.edu.cn
• Jean-Pierre Gattuso, OA-ICC focal point for data management, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche, France, gattuso(at)obs-vlfr.fr
• Lina Hansson, OA-ICC Project Officer, IAEA Environment Laboratories, Principality of Monaco, l.hansson(at)iaea.org