3  Principle: Restricted Access Species Data Should be Discoverable

3.1 Data Catalogue

The Australian Government Best Practice Guide to Applying Data Sharing Principles specifies that a catalogue of held datasets is best practice, encourages transparency and enables decision-making on datasets to take place in an informed environment.

Recognising the limited resources available to most data custodians, working towards a publicly available catalogue of all Restricted Access Species Data (RASD) datasets, with metadata, to enable users to understand what datasets are accessible and not accessible, is strongly encouraged.

Metadata statements need to conform to the standards set out in the best practice metadata sample available in Supplement 4: Restricted Access Species Data Metadata Statement Template and row level metadata to conform to Darwin Core.

3.2 Provision of Data Catalogue

Data custodians should provide a copy of their RASD catalogues for inclusion in a centralised metadata repository such as Research Data Australia.