The International Symposium on Linking Environmental Data and Samples brought together leading researchers in earth and environmental informatics, to examine the current state of the art in environmental science data publication and its use of modern web principles. The focus was on linking data, with a particular interest in the integration of physical samples with datasets based on these, with a goal of triggering the adoption of uniform practices across Australia and internationally.
Communities within the earth and environmental sciences that have been particularly active in these areas include:
Marine geoscience and oceanography
Biodiversity
Some of these have a particular reliance in physical samples, including geological sciences and biodiversity. The symposium explored opportunities for alignment of identifier and registration systems from these disciplines, as well as more general research data systems like DataCite.
The design of the symposium built on the experience of the highly successful Earth Science Information Partnership (ESIP) series that has been running for more than two decades in North America.