Digital repository of associations between environmental variables: A new resource to facilitate knowledge synthesis
Open accessAbstract
Responsible care and management of Earth's resources requires scientific support, but the pool of underused research is growing rapidly. Environmental science research studies describe associations between variables (e.g. statistical relationships between stressors and responses). We propose open-access and online sharing of such associations. This concept differs from various efforts around the world to promote sharing of primary research data, but holds similar goals of improved use of existing knowledge. The initiative is made possible by recent developments in information technology and evolving online culture (e.g. crowdsourcing and citizen science). We have begun to connect existing projects that catalog and store associations, thereby moving toward a single virtual repository. Researchers and decision makers may share and re-use associations for myriad purposes, including: increasing efficiency and timeliness of systematic reviews, environmental assessments and meta-analyses, identifying knowledge gaps and research opportunities, providing evolved metrics of research impact, and demonstrating connections between research and environmental improvement.
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Research from healthcare has shown that the effect of a single extra study on the conclusions of a review can depend on both the statistical power of the added study, and the extent of inter-study variability in the specified response variable.
“Research from healthcare has shown that the effect of a single extra study on the conclusions of a review can depend on both the statistical power of the added study 24 , and the extent of inter-study variability in the specified response variable 25 .”
From Software support for environmental evidence synthesis (2018) · cites this paper as [24]
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- Authors
- Ziegler, C. R., Webb, J. A., Norton, S. B., Pullin, A. S., & Melcher, A. H.
- Affiliations
- Environmental Protection Agency (US)
- The University of Melbourne (AU)
- Bangor University (GB)
- BOKU University (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Ziegler, C. Richard
- Venue
- Ecological Indicators
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-06
- Volume
- 53
- Pages
- 61-69
- ISSN
- 1470-160X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1972087516
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 10.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Ecological Indicators (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- WISER (226273)
- MARS (603378)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geology › Environmental Monitoring and Data Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Data Analysis and Archiving
- Keywords
- digital repositories, environmental organizations, knowledge sharing, open access, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, environmental assessment, research reuse, knowledge gaps, research impact metrics, crowdsourcing, citizen science
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