Abstract

PANGAEA's datasets require abstracts. An abstract provides a description of the data publication; the format is the same as in any paper publication. Please do not just give short answers to the questions below, but provide us with a suitable paragraph.

Dataset abstracts should contain a concise and method-oriented description of the observation, collection or measurement, namely what, where, when, how and why the data was collected.

During data submission, the abstract should be inserted into the "Description" section of the submission form or uploaded as an "Attachment" in form of a text file. The length should be ideally limited to 5000 characters. If one submission contains several data sets (tables), abstracts need to be provided for all tables.

Do's and Don'ts

 * Make sure the abstract contains following set of information (not necessarily in the same order):
 * WHAT are the observations that were made, what are the parameters that were measured, what are the samples that were collected, what are the experiments that were performed, what was modeled?
 * WHERE was the data collection done on the Earth, what is the geographical coverage? The precision of this information should be made in context of the spatial extent of the dataset, e.g.: global, sea, ocean, continent, country, region, ...
 * WHEN was the data collection done, what is the temporal coverage? The precision of this information should be made in context of the temporal extent of the dataset, e.g.: geological era, centuries, millennia, decades, months, days, ...
 * HOW was the data collected? Describe the methods concisely.
 * and WHY was the data collected? What was the purpose? This will have important implications for reusability of the data, and its possible limitations, for other purposes.
 * Avoid interpretation of the results, this should not be a part of data publication.
 * If you use acronyms, spell them out.
 * Abstract may contain necessary references. In that case, include the article DOI or a full citation (if no DOI is available).


 * Many metadata items are listed in the metaheader. Like that, they are both human and machine readable and do not have to be part of the abstract. Instead, these metadata (if not already a part of the dataset), should be listed separately, as a comment of the submission or in a simple text file attached to the submission. These include for example:
 * Contact information of the PI (listed in the Parameter table)
 * Link to the cruise report, chief scientist
 * Geolocation (part of Event)

Supplementary data publications
If the dataset is associated to a manuscript, the abstract of the dataset needs to be data specific. You can use an extract of your manuscript abstract if it includes a part with a reference to the data.

Data collection abstract
Data collections require a common abstract. In addition to that, each of the individual datasets may have a separate abstract.

Examples

 * A dataset with an informative abstract:
 * Abstract for a data collection:
 * Abstract for a data collection with additional abstracts for individual data sets: