Member Node Approval Process

After reviewing DataONE literature and deciding that a partnership with DataONE would be beneficial to all parties, a Member Node will, working with project personnel, prepare a “proposal” including information about data holdings, scope of interaction with DataONE, etc. This includes completion of a Member Node Description Document.

The DataONE Member Nodes team will evaluate the proposal using several of the criteria below:

Selection criteria

• First Principle: Select MNs for joining DataONE based on number of instantiations.
• Second Principle: Select MNs based on quantity and quality of data.
• Third Principle: Select high-profile MNs.
• Fourth Principle: Select pragmatically - knowing that there are resources and enthusiasm to complete the tasks.
• Fifth Principle: Select MNs based on their ability to contribute to long-term sustainability.
• Sixth Principle: Select MNs that are diverse and geographically distributed so that we cover a range of MN types and globally distributed nodes.
• Seventh Principle: Select based on showing exemplars for what we want DataONE to be.

Criteria for Standing Up a DataONE Member Node

• Size and visibility of the community represented by the candidate MN.

• The collections are significant or enable new science or both.

• Fills significant gaps in the content available through DataONE.

• The data are unique data in the broader community.

• Collections are strong in breadth, depth or both

• The candidate brings significant contributions to the DataONE resource base, including:

  1. strategic partnerships
  2. professional expertise in managing data, computing, administration, etc.
  3. synergistic services
  4. new funding streams or other sustainability enhancing resources
  5. technical resources such as storage capacity, bandwidth, and processing power
  6. compatibility with DataONE services, minimizing cost of deployment

• The candidate adds diversity to the collective membership of DataONE such as through:

  1. geographic diversity: a new state or region, new country, new continent
  2. under-represented group
  3. linguistic and cultural diversity
  4. different type of institution
  5. diversity of funding sources

• The candidate offers compliance with best practices and standards, including:

  1. quality assurance
  2. data sharing policies
  3. metadata creation
  4. security