“Without a repository, the data is invisible,” Pierre Cantelaube
Pierre Cantelaube, a research engineer at INRAE, is among the top three most active depositors in the Recherche Data Gouv repository, with 254 datasets deposited since its inauguration in July 2022. This staggering number will undoubtedly decrease to better meet the needs of the scientific community. Interview
Who are you?
I am a statistical and geomatics engineer, a data producer, at the Rural Development Observatory (ODR) at the INRAE Occitanie-Toulouse center.
I support research stakeholders in accessing and processing their data, particularly data relating to cropping and agricultural production systems. This involves a multitude of associated datasets: for example, annual data relating to agricultural plots in France (crops encountered, agricultural practices, etc.).
Around fifteen of us colleagues provide support for research and the evaluation of public policies, particularly on topics related to the Common Agricultural Policy.
Why deposit your research data?
While many data require confidentiality (personal data, restricted data, etc.), more and more land use data are public. This is particularly true since the rise of geographic data with a spatial reference. Anyone can access them.
Previously, we were contacted directly by email or through our website to share our data and their updates. However, it was still necessary to know that the data mentioned existed! Now, the Research Data Gouv repository provides immediate visibility into the range of our research data productions, particularly outside of INRAE. This complements the range of products and services based on the data historically available on our website, where we also offer more sophisticated and diverse resources (composite indicators, dynamic tables, maps, documentation, etc.).
Besides this visibility, what does the Recherche Data Gouv repository offer you?
This type of data is produced regularly—generally once a year—and the datasets are sometimes used in publications. Depositing data on Recherche Data Gouv also allows us to formalize the data, gain recognition for our work, and track their use over time, particularly through the assignment of a DOI.
Depositing data on the Recherche Data Gouv repository is also often a prerequisite for writing a data paper, linking the dataset in the repository to the publication describing the data, for example, deposited in HAL (or with a publisher).
Example: one of our recent data papers: An integrated pedo-climatic dataset at the agricultural parcel level, which describes nine datasets from the Recherche Data Gouv repository.
> https://hal.science/hal-05246049v1
What are your plans for your future repositories?
The next step is to rethink the structure of our repositories. With experience, we realize that having many fragmented datasets—in our case—is not optimal for the user, even if each user may have a different optimal solution!
We will group land use data over a broader scope, that of the region and not the department as previously. This grouping will simplify access to the datasets we offer. This will undoubtedly simplify the reuse of our data by stakeholders such as environmental agencies, research institutes, etc., who use our data on a daily basis. We therefore plan to deposit fewer but better data, at the risk of losing our "top position"!
Even though the process of submitting a dataset is relatively simple, I would also like to work on a "template" summarizing the metadata we provide for each submission, in order to further speed up the process.
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