Toward an improved data stewardship and service for environmental and ecological science data in West China

Abstract Sharing of scientific data can help scientific research to flourish and facilitate more widespread use of scientific data for the benefit of society. The Environmental and Ecological Science Data Center for West China (WestDC), sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), aims to collect, manage, integrate, and disseminate environmental and ecological data from western China. It also aims to provide a long-term data service for multidisciplinary research within NSFC's “Environment and Ecology of West China Research Plan” (NSFC West Plan). An integrated platform has been developed by the WestDC, and this has the function of data sharing, acting as a knowledge repository. Major data sets developed by the WestDC include basic geographic data, the regionalization of global data set for China, scientific data for cold and arid regions in China, scientific data for the cryosphere in countries that neighbor China, data relating to the inland river basins in northwestern China, and data submitted by the NSFC West Plan projects. In compliance with the “full and open” data sharing policy, most data in the WestDC can be accessed online. Highlights include detailed data documentation, the integration of data with bibliographic knowledge, data publishing, and data reference.