DATA MANAGEMENT IN AQUACULTURE: ABIDING BY THE U.S. FEDERAL DATA QUALITY ACT

Amanda A. Hyman*, Stephanie Ichien, Cole Ensminger, and Hillary S. Egna
 
*Amanda.hyman@oregonstate.edu, AquaFish Innovation Lab, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon USA
 

Data and information are valuable national and global resources. Although data sharing has increased over the last decade partly because of government and/or peer-reviewed journal mandates, many scientists never publish their datasets to publicly-available repositories and, furthermore, of those datasets that are published, many are incomplete or unusable. As AquaFish Innovation Lab (AquaFish) begins to publish their data in compliance with the U.S. mandate for increased access to federally funded scientific research, our greatest hurdles and lessons revolve around data management. As an interdisciplinary program working in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with nearly 300 partner institutions since 2006, AquaFish presents as a unique opportunity to explore the challenges of managing legacy datasets in international development (e.g., data in several languages, quality control) and the importance and potential impacts of successfully managing such data (e.g., augmented collaboration, decreased administrative costs, increased technology transfers to local communities).