Towards FAIR paleomagnetic data management through Paleomagnetism.org 2.0

Abstract

Scientific communities are placing an increasing emphasis on the implementation of data management protocols concerning data archiving and distribution. For instance, every proposal submitted to the European Horizon 2020 program, as well as to the National Science Foundation in the USA, requires a dedicated section that outlines project data management and accessibility. The widely adopted FAIR data guidelines identify core principles concerning modern data management conventions. The wide variety of data formats, the low data volume, and the general lack of a culture of data sharing makes that the paleomagnetic community rarely follows any of the FAIR principles. Most institutions define their own data formats and use in‐house software to analyze their demagnetization data, which are critical to Paleomagnetic research. Efforts to overcome these problems exist in the form of the MagIC database for data archiving, and the online paleomagnetic data analysis and interpretation platform Paleomagnetism.org. In this contribution, we describe the second iteration of Paleomagnetism.org: an online multiplatform open‐source environment for paleomagnetic data analysis. This update comprises a full overhaul of the application to satisfy the increasingly demanding data management requirements. The application now facilitates a workflow that aligns with FAIR guidelines by documenting data provenance. All data analyzed through the application are easily submitted to a public data library that distributes data and results through an HTTPS web service that lives up to modern data management standards.