Lessons Learned: A Data Repository's Experience Requiring Data Management Training

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Information and Data Cooperative (GRIIDC) is a data management system that provides researchers with a variety of tools to help manage data throughout the lifecycle of a project. GRIIDC was developed to fulfill the requirement that all Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) funded researchers make their data publicly available. After seven years of operation and over 1,900 datasets available for download, GRIIDC has encountered many challenges, including data organization issues, researchers’ varied experience with technology, and hesitance to share data. In 2016, GRIIDC began hosting training webinars to help researchers navigate the system, submit quality data and metadata, and provide data organization best practices. As the quality of data and metadata improved, GRIIDC determined that these webinars could mitigate previous issues. In 2017, the GoMRI data policy was updated requiring that each newly funded research consortium or individual investigator complet...