19. An attempt to make open data FAIR. How SLU made data discoverable and reusable by creating the environmental data catalogue

How we made data discoverable, accessible and reusable with the environmental data catalogue

Open science, including open data, is an important part of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences' strategy. The university also has a data management policy that states that data from research and environmental monitoring should be openly available with as few restrictions as possible in accordance with the FAIR principles.

SLU's environmental data catalogue was built to enable a common and searchable web-based interface to the university's environmental monitoring data. The university already has a large amount of open research data, but finding data is a challenge as it is available in many different places such as webpages, data portals, and repositories, which of course makes it difficult for those who want to reuse data, for example for research purposes.

The catalogue was launched in autumn 2022 and the ambition is to continuously collect descriptive information (metadata) on all data to provide a common entry point for data access via SLU's environmental data catalogue. So far we have received a positive response since the launch and we face the challenge of making the catalogue and the university's open data even more FAIR.

https://www.slu.se/en/environment/statistics-and-environmental-data/search-for-open-environmental-data/