Standing on Shaky Grounds: On the Resilience of Geochemical Databases

Geochemists today can look back on 25 years of online access to large-scale, global geochemical databases that have inspired and supported hundreds of scientific studies, generating new knowledge, and even leading to entirely new methods of geochemical data analytics that were not possible in times when individual researchers needed to spend years to compile their comprehensive syntheses of literature data. Geochemical databases provide easy access to millions of geochemical measurements for the global research community, but they do not come for free. They require dedicated, stable funding that supports the human and technical infrastructure to operate reliable, trusted data services in the long term. Currently, these databases are funded through research grants from federal agencies. Grants needs to be recompeted every 3 to 5 years and may not be renewed. Funding gaps are possible (and have happened), generating substantial challenges for uninterrupted maintenance and access of the geochemical databases

Long-term sustainability of databases such as PetDB/EarthChem and GEOROC/DIGIS is a problem that the geochemistry community needs to address jointly and on a global scale to ensure future availability of what has become a fundamental research infrastructure. An alliance of international geochemical data providers and members of the OneGeochemistry initiative (https://onegeochemistry.org) recently issued a Call to Action to engage the community broadly – researchers, scientific societies, research institutions, data providers – to develop a shared vision and agree on a roadmap for sustainable access to geochemical data. This presentation will provide an overview and updates the campaign to ensure access to geochemical data.