PANGAEA - An ICSU World Data Center as a Networked Publication and Library System for Geoscientific Data

Since 1992 PANGAEA serves as an archive for all types of geoscientific and environmental data. From the beginning the PANGAEA group started initiatives and aimed at an organisation structure which -- beyond the technical structure and operation of the system -- would help to improve the quality and general availability of scientific data. Project data management is done since 1996. 2001 the ICSU World Data Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (WDC-MARE) was founded and since 2003 -- together with other German WDC -- the group was working on the development of data publications as a new publication type. To achieve interoperability with other data centers and portals the system was adapted to global information standards. PANGAEA has implemented a number of community specific data portals. 2007 - under the coordination of the PANGAEA group - an initiative for networking all WDC was started. On the long range ISCU supports plans to develop the WDC system into a global network of publishers and open access libraries for scientific data