ScienceBase Updates - Fall 2024
Fall 2024 topics include news on authentication in ScienceBase, information on ROR IDs and citation management on ScienceBase landing pages, a tip on parsing XML metadata records, and a featured data release.
Table of Contents
- Featured Data Release: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries
- DOI M365/Entra User Authentication Policy Changes in ScienceBase
- Increasing Connections Among Research Products with Research Organization Registry (ROR) IDs
- Citation Management on ScienceBase data release pages
- Did You Know – Parsing XML Metadata Records
Featured Data Release
Map of leading import sources (2019-2022) of nonfuel mineral commodities for which the U.S. was greater than 50% net import reliant
Data on mineral commodities is crucial for economic insights and resource management. Accurate information on critical minerals like lithium and copper helps governments and stakeholders understand market trends, manage mineral resources sustainably, guide environmental impact assessments, and formulate effective policies. The U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024 Data Release is a database that contains salient statistics and world production statistics for over 88 nonfuel mineral commodities. This data release was the most viewed and downloaded ScienceBase data release published in fiscal year 2024.
This data release and its associated publication have been cited in policy documents from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), an intergovernmental organization supporting a sustainable energy future, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research organization, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a U.S. government agency. These policy documents outline the current supply and demands for minerals influencing the electric vehicle market, semiconductor supply chains, and provide a landscape analysis of critical minerals in Southeast Asia. The data release also has an associated data visualization component for easier understandability.
References
National Minerals Information Center, 2024, U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024 Data Release (ver. 2.0, March 2024): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P144BA54.
U.S. Geological Survey, 2024, Mineral commodity summaries 2024: U.S. Geological Survey, 212 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/mcs2024.
IRENA, 2024, Critical materials: Batteries for electric vehicles, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi, https://www.irena.org/Publications/2024/Sep/Critical-materials-Batteries-for-electric-vehicles.
CSIS, 2024, Mineral Demands for Resilient Semiconductor Supply Chains, https://www.csis.org/analysis/mineral-demands-resilient-semiconductor-supply-chains.
USAID, 2024, Landscape Analysis of Critical Minerals in Southeast Asia, https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA021ZQZ.pdf.
To meet forthcoming Department requirements, ScienceBase Catalog will be implementing a change in November for DOI user sign-in. ScienceBase authentication will be updated to use Microsoft EntraID. This change should be of minimal impact for users; however, USGS and other DOI users will need to link their DOI email with EntraID login after this change is made. This step will only need to be completed once. Users should expect to see a new prompt after this update, receive an email, and click through the confirmation link.
Please contact the ScienceBase team if you encounter any problems (sciencebase@usgs.gov).
Many people are becoming familiar with ORCIDs, which are free, unique, persistent identifiers (PIDs) for people. ORCIDs help to distinguish between researchers with the same name, help find research published by a person who has used different name aliases, and compile research products into a single profile for researchers. Research Organization Registry (ROR) IDs are lesser known but equally important identifiers used in the research lifecycle. ROR IDs help to disambiguate research organizations and help aggregate research products associated with research organizations. For example, the ROR ID for the USGS is https://ror.org/035a68863. If you follow the link for the USGS ROR ID, you will see that there is metadata associated with the ROR ID, such as alternate names, organization type, and a website link.
At the USGS, we are striving to use as many persistent identifiers, like ORCIDs and ROR IDs, as we can to make connections across the research ecosystem. These identifiers are being implemented in the USGS Asset Identifier Service (AIS) to support referencing authors, contributors, and affiliations within Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs). Over the last year, there have been some updates with respect to ROR IDs and their use in USGS data and software DOIs that we would like everyone to be aware of.
All USGS Science Centers now have ROR IDs
If you look at the USGS ROR ID record, you will see the Science Centers listed as “Child Organizations”. Clicking on a child organization will take you to the ROR record for the Science Center where you will see the ROR ID and additional metadata. For example, here is the record for the Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center.
All organizational creators/authors listed in a data or software DOI need to have a ROR ID
If an organizational creator does not currently have a ROR ID, we can request that the organization be added to the Registry. It generally takes about 4 weeks to have an organization added to the Registry. Individual authors can submit a request directly to ROR or you can email ask-sdm@usgs.gov and we can submit the request on your behalf. Please plan ahead if you know you will be using an organizational creator for your ScienceBase Data Release citation so we can ensure that they have a ROR ID before you are ready to publish your data.
An Organization Picker is now available within the ScienceBase Data Release Tool and AIS user interfaces
The Organization Picker will enable you to find organizations in ROR and associate them with your DOI record. You can search by organization name, acronym, or ROR ID.
When ROR IDs are used to identify organizational creators in DOIs, the products identified by the DOI will appear under the organizations profile in DataCite Commons. This feature is a cool way for organizations to keep track of products to which they have contributed.
Screenshot of the DataCite Commons page for the Minnesota Geological Survey, showing a USGS data release that lists MGS as an author with the ROR ID.
There is no use in denying it, we're all busy - we don't have the time to backtrack and find all the records and citations that we reference throughout our day, but it must be done. Luckily, there are tools that can save you the hassle: citation managers.
Citation management tools are built to collect references and data that you can then use to organize your research projects. Depending on the tool and your needs, you can tag, annotate, and easily create citations in your chosen writing software. Most citation managers consist of three elements: a citation collection; browser extensions to capture citation information; and some method to easily insert your citations into your working space. You can also share your libraries, allowing for greater collaboration with your research peers. You've probably heard of some of these tools, such as Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote--the trick is finding the best one that works for your research needs.
Say your research uses data found in ScienceBase. In ScienceBase, most of the work is already done for you. Finding reference information in ScienceBase is easier thanks to the consistent structure and fields of the landing pages. Data release landing pages in ScienceBase contain a title, relevant dates, a summary, contacts, and most importantly, a suggested citation. Citation management tools can easily scrape this information from the page to store in a centralized location.
How they work and how they can work for you
If you were to use Zotero for a ScienceBase item, its browser extension would recognize that you are looking at a reference and show an icon in your URL bar. Clicking this icon adds the item to your Zotero references. As a free, open-source product, Zotero delivers easy, user-friendly functionality. Its strengths lie in managing a variety of formats, including webpages. Users can save snapshots of web pages, highlight text and annotate on a page, and tag records.
Mendeley works similarly. It is another free, web-based tool used best for pulling citation information from PDFs. Users can add papers directly from the browser or import documents from the desktop, with automatic citation extraction from PDFs. You can even sync your Zotero library for the best of both worlds.
EndNote is another option for those willing to pay the subscription fee. While not a free and open-source software, it is best for organizing large collections of citations for papers and long research projects, with a wide variety of citation styles. EndNote is also easily customizable and has clean integration with Microsoft Word, making it ideal for maintaining large libraries.
ScienceBase can parse FGDC-CSDGM (Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) XML metadata records. When you upload an FGDC-compliant XML metadata file to ScienceBase, it recognizes the format and automatically populates the relevant fields in the ScienceBase item. Parsing FGDC-CSDGM metadata in ScienceBase streamlines the management and sharing of data, ensuring consistency, enhancing searchability, saving time, and improving interoperability. Here's how it works:
- You can upload your FGDC-CSDGM XML metadata file directly to ScienceBase.
- ScienceBase will recognize the FGDC-CSDGM format, and a pop-up window will appear. Select "Yes" to automatically populate the fields.
- The extracted metadata information will be used to populate the corresponding fields in the ScienceBase item.
If you have to re-upload your metadata record after you’ve already populated the landing page, and you don’t want that content to be overwritten, you can always select “No, just attach the metadata file to the item.”