AusGeochem is live!
AusGeochem platform showing analytical data for Australian samples spanning 4 billion years. Image: AuScope Geochemistry Network
The AGN Project Team and collaborators Lithodat are excited to announce that the first iteration of the AusGeochem platform is now live and available for public use. AusGeochem is a cloud-hosted open geochemistry data platform that is simultaneously a geosample registry, a geochemistry data repository, and an active research tool. Members of the community are invited to register as AusGeochem users and begin exploring the platform and even upload their own geosample data.
A year in the making
The first public version of AusGeochem marks the culmination of over a year of collaborative efforts between the AuScope Geochemistry Network project team, software developers Lithodat, and the many geoscience experts across Australia that form the AGN Expert Advisory Groups. These relationships utilise a diverse range of geo- and data-science knowledge to ensure AusGeochem is fit for purpose and of use to both industry and academia alike.
A FAIR tool for all
The current geochemical data ecosystem falls well short of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Data goals, with the bulk of scientifically significant data never reaching the wider community. Indeed, a straw poll of leading geochemists across Australia at the 2018 TANG3O (Thermochronology and Noble Gas Geochronology and Geochemistry Organisation) Meeting estimated a mere ~5-10% of geochemistry data produced in Australian laboratories ever reaches the public domain.
“AusGeochem will change the way we curate, migrate and store data and help to transform the Australian geochemistry data ecosystem into one that encourages a data sharing culture more aligned with the FAIR data objectives.”
What can AusGeochem do?
AusGeochem is an open platform designed to serve as an all-in-one geosample registry, geochemistry data repository, and an active research tool.
In this first release, AusGeochem includes AGN-developed database schemas for rock and mineral geosample metadata and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) U-Pb. The data schemas include fields for reference material results and error reporting, allowing AusGeochem users to independently perform quality assessments of data archived in the database. The powerful relational database architecture of AusGeochem means that once data is uploaded it can then be inspected in the context of existing publicly available datasets, through on-the-fly data synthesis, visualisation, and analysis.
These robust platform foundations will facilitate the future development of additional method-specific data models, with work already underway for laser ablation inductively-coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) U-Pb and Lu-Hf, Ar-Ar, fission-track and (U-Th-Sm)/He techniques with additional techniques also slated for the AusGeochem development pipeline.
Screenshot of the U-Pb SIMS dashboard on AusGeochem displaying a compilation of selected data points. Image: AuScope Geochemistry Network
Who can use AusGeochem?
AusGeochem is free to use and open to users from anywhere in the world. Registration is quick and easy, the instructions can be found here.
The Future
AusGeochem has the potential to store huge compilations of structured geoscientific data, covering a wide variety of techniques that will be readily comparable in a way never before possible. We hope that this growing wealth of FAIR and relational geochemistry data will facilitate the growth of Big Data in geoscience, enabling more efficient and robust research into the future.
To ensure you’re kept up to date with all of AusGeochem’s developments, and to provide feedback, register to become a user today!