4.5 Review

Open Science principles for accelerating trait-based science across the Tree of Life

Journal

NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 294-303

Publisher

NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-1109-6

Keywords

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Funding

  1. Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship [DE170100208]
  2. Australian Research Council Future Fellowship [FT160100113]
  3. NERC [R/142195-11-1]
  4. NSF [ABI-1759965, EF-1802605, DEB0133974, HDR1934790, EF1065844]
  5. USDA Forest Service agreement [18-CS-11046000-041]
  6. German Research Foundation [DFG KE1743/7-1, FOR 1451]
  7. Biological and Environmental Research program in the United States Department of Energy's Office of Science
  8. DFG Priority Program 1374
  9. Swiss National Science Foundation
  10. Benson Fund from the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History
  11. SERDP project [RC18-1346]
  12. Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship Grant
  13. Oxford Martin School Fellowship
  14. Australian Research Council [FT160100113] Funding Source: Australian Research Council
  15. NERC [NE/M018458/2] Funding Source: UKRI

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Synthesizing trait observations and knowledge across the Tree of Life remains a grand challenge for biodiversity science. Species traits are widely used in ecological and evolutionary science, and new data and methods have proliferated rapidly. Yet accessing and integrating disparate data sources remains a considerable challenge, slowing progress toward a global synthesis to integrate trait data across organisms. Trait science needs a vision for achieving global integration across all organisms. Here, we outline how the adoption of key Open Science principles-open data, open source and open methods-is transforming trait science, increasing transparency, democratizing access and accelerating global synthesis. To enhance widespread adoption of these principles, we introduce the Open Traits Network (OTN), a global, decentralized community welcoming all researchers and institutions pursuing the collaborative goal of standardizing and integrating trait data across organisms. We demonstrate how adherence to Open Science principles is key to the OTN community and outline five activities that can accelerate the synthesis of trait data across the Tree of Life, thereby facilitating rapid advances to address scientific inquiries and environmental issues. Lessons learned along the path to a global synthesis of trait data will provide a framework for addressing similarly complex data science and informatics challenges. A decentralized community is introduced that aims to standardize and integrate species trait data across organismal groups, based on principles of Open Science.

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