Through RWSC, federal agencies, states, industry, environmental nonprofits, and the research community work together to conduct coordinated research. To facilitate coordination among these sectors, many of which fund and/or require research, and the research community, RWSC maintains several tools and resources.
Long-term and archival passive acoustic monitoring (PAM)
The research community and state, federal, and industry funders of long-term/archival PAM in U.S. Atlantic waters have the common goal of detecting and characterizing broad-scale shifts in baleen whale detections throughout the region. RWSC convenes these groups to coordinate regional deployment, data management, and analysis of long-term/archival PAM. The RWSC Marine Mammal Subcommittee leads this work.
Acoustic telemetry
The RWSC, in collaboration with the Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA) and the Atlantic Cooperative Telemetry Network (ACT) is coordinating regional deployment, data management, and analysis of acoustic telemetry data in offshore wind energy areas. Within the RWSC, the Protected Fish Species Subcommittee and Sea Turtle Subcommittee lead this work.
RWSC Data Policy
The RWSC Data Policy specifically applies to work supported by RWSC research funding and is designed to help inform other policies, contracts, and agreements so that research can advance knowledge, be used in decision-making, and have wide utility to researchers, government agencies, and others. The Policy is available under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication so that anyone can repurpose and reuse its contents, in whole or in part.
Recommended contract language
A github repository that includes publicly available information about recommended language for research agreements and contracts to ensure interoperable data.
Glossary of data management and governance terms
A useful reference for the terminology used by RWSC and partners to refer to data management and governance work.
Essential metadata guidelines
Metadata describing every research and monitoring dataset collected are required to ensure that all data can be found, indexed, and accessed via a Data Catalog. These essential metadata are meant to apply across all research domains and subject areas, and for all research outputs related to offshore wildlife.
Data Management & Sharing Plan (DMSP) Template
RWSC developed a data management plan template on DMPTool.org that is customized to capture critical information identified by the RWSC Subcommittees and that will generate a DMSP compliant with RWSC data management recommendations and requirements.
Assessment of data repositories and progress toward understanding the data landscape to build a Data Catalog
To facilitate coordinated research and analysis for wildlife and marine ecosystems, the Data Governance Subcommittee has been working with other taxa- and habitat-focused RWSC Subcommittees to identify and recommend long-term storage options for each type of data described in the Science Plan.