Open Science

Between The Fjords have an Open Science policy. In practice, this means that we emphasize making our methods, workflows, code and data publicly available, either as a standalone dataset, published data paper, or when appropriate – in databases.

Data

All our data are stored on the Open Science Framework (OSF) data repository, and are made public as they are populated.

Published data papers:

  • Vandvik, V., Halbritter, A.H., Yang, Y. et al. Plant traits and vegetation data from climate warming experiments along an 1100 m elevation gradient in Gongga Mountains, China. Sci Data 7, 189 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0529-0

Datasets published in online repositories:

  • Plue J, Van Calster H, Auestad I, Basto S, Bekker RM, Bruun HH, Chevalier R, Decocq G, Grandin U, Hermy M, Jacquemyn H, Jakobsson A, Kalamees R, Marrs RH, Marteinsdóttir B, Milberg P, Pakeman RJ, Phoenix G, Thompson K, Vandvik V, Wagner M, Cousins SAO, Eriksson O, Ghorbani J, Jankowska-Błaszczuk M, Klanderud K, Koch MA, Le Duc M, Lee H, Meineri E, McAllister HA, Måren IE, Poschlod P, Rosenburgh A, Rydgren K, Töpper JP & Auffret AG. 2021. European soil seed bank communities across a climate and land-cover gradient, Dryad Digital Repository. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ksn02v72g
  • Vandvik V, Elven, R & Töpper JP. 2016. Data from: Seedling recruitment in subalpine grassland forbs: Predicting field regeneration behaviour from lab germination responses. Dryad Digital Repository http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.04f8c
  • Vandvik V, Klanderud K, Meineri EPF, Måren IE & Töpper JP. 2015. Data from: Seed banks are biodiversity reservoirs: species-area relationships above versus below ground. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.q401b
  • Vandvik V, Töpper JP, Cook Z, Daws MI, Heegaard E, Måren IE & Velle LG. 2014. Data from: Management-driven evolution in a domesticated ecosystem. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.191d5

Note: Published data are openly available, but intellectual ownerships and authorship rights of the data and broader meta-data (including the study design, raw data, data documentation, etc.) follows the data when shared outside of the Between The Fjords group. Any potential issues should be discussed before data sharing (following best community standards, roughly as reflected  by our full data including data documentation are published under CC-BY of CC-BY-SA license or similar).

Code

Our GitHub page contains well-documented repositories including access to raw data published on OSF and cleaning code. We also share our packages such as turfmapper, developed to plot community composition maps over time.

Registered reports

If feasible, we encourage our students and staff to publish their work using Registered Reports. This type of publication relies on peer-review of the introduction, materials and methods before the data are being collected. If the validity of the research questions, and quality of proposed methods is confirmed through peer review, the paper is provisionally accepted provided that the actual data collection doesn’t deviate from the proposed methods.

This way of publishing ensures a better allignment with open science values and practices. It avoids improper data handling such as selective reporting of data or post-hoc storytelling. At the same time it allows for publication of a paper even if results are unexpected or less groundbreaking than anticipated.

Methods

The ClimEx Handbook: standardized methods in climate change experiments.

As standardized protocols a of major importance in the reproducibility and comparibiliy of scientifivc studies, we developed The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx). 

The aim of this paper was to create a handbook of standardised field and laboratory methods across the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum, applicable to a broad range of terrestrial ecosystem climate-change studies worldwide. This includes experiments as wella  plot-based temporal and spatial gradient studies.

Because of their dominance in terrestrial ecosystems, we focused mainly on plant communities and the other organisms with which they interact. We discuss a variety of organisms (i.e. microbes, fungi, invertebrates, and first-order plant–animal interactions) where the connection to vegetation and ecosystem functioning is apparent.