U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Ag Data Commons Maintenance - Friday 03/31/23

The Ag Data Commons website and application may experience brief, intermittent outages due to network issues. Avoid adding or editing datasets during this period to prevent losing information.. We apologize for the inconvenience. This notice will be removed once the issue is resolved.

Figshare logo and slogan reading "Credit for all your research"
January 18, 2023
Ag Data Commons is moving!

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) is excited to announce that the Ag Data Commons data repository and catalog will be moving to a new platform hosted by Figshare. We expect to launch our new repository and submission portal in October 2023.

All published catalog records and datasets with their associated DOIs will be migrated to the new platform. The team here at NAL will continue to provide curation and administration services for the Ag Data Commons.

Moving to the new platform will allow us to offer many improvements for our users, such as:

• automatic versioning,
• ease of submission, especially for larger data files (up to 50 GB),
• dataset-level citation counts and Altmetric scores,
• support for double-blind peer review process,
• integration with GitHub, and
• robust bi-directional API capabilities.

Stay tuned for more information! We welcome your comments and questions at NAL-ADC-Curator@usda.gov.

Diagram of data annotation workflows for the ARDN project
October 7, 2022
ARDN Data Interoperability Conference at NAL

The National Agricultural Library hosted a conference and workshops on June 7-9, 2022 to wrap up a three-year collaboration with the University of Florida on a NIFA-funded project titled Agricultural Research Data Network for Modeling and Analytics (ARDN).

The goal of the project was to increase interoperability and re-use of publicly available datasets by the crop modeling community. The ARDN team developed tools and protocols to annotate research data with a common vocabulary, such as ICASA. This annotated data can then be easily aggregated and re-used in models and other quantitative analyses. Annotated datasets created during this project can be found on the ARDN program page on the Ag Data Commons.

To learn more about ARDN and how their tools can help make data more re-usable, you can view selected presentations from the conference on NAL’s YouTube channel.

April 11, 2022
Citations to Datasets in Ag Data Commons Continue to Grow!

Datasets in Ag Data Commons have now been cited over 600 times since 2017 and new citations are recorded weekly. Ag Data Commons helps scientists increase the impact of their research by making their data findable and easily citable. Data citations give credit to data producers and make science more transparent and reproducible.

Visit our up to date Zotero library to see how Ag Data Commons data is being re-used in scholarly literature. Watch our "Submitting Data to the Ag Data Commons” webinar to learn how to deposit your USDA supported data into the Ag Data Commons.

Laptop and cell phone linked by an arrow pointing to each with a checkmark above
October 15, 2021
Two-Factor Authentication Now Required on the Ag Data Commons

To comply with federal mandates, two-factor authentication (2FA) is now required to log into the Ag Data Commons.

2FA adds an extra layer of protection to keep your information secure. Each time you log into the Ag Data Commons with your username and password, you will be prompted to enter a code generated by the Google Authenticator app. If you do not have a smartphone, you can use a windows/palm os/java phone client.

If you have not already set up 2FA for your account, you will be prompted to do so the next time you log in to the Ag Data Commons. A short video walking you through the process is available on YouTube. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at NAL-ADC-Curator@usda.gov.

July 14, 2020
Submitting Data to the Ag Data Commons Webinar

UPDATE: This event has passed, but you can view the webinar recording on the NAL YouTube channel!

Join us for our next webinar and learn the basics of submitting data to the Ag Data Commons. After a brief introduction and review, we will provide a live demo of the data submission process. We will answer questions during the last portion of the hour.

On Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 2PM Eastern Time, the Ag Data Commons team will offer “Submitting Data to the Ag Data Commons”. Space for this event is limited, so please register in advance.

Federal Register
January 29, 2020
Request for Comment: Federal Data Repositories, desirable characteristics

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is seeking public comments on a draft set of desirable characteristics of data repositories used to locate, manage, share, and use data resulting from Federally funded research. The purpose of this effort is to identify and help Federal agencies provide more consistent information on desirable characteristics of data repositories for data subject to agency Public Access Plans and data management and sharing policies. Responses are due by 6 March 2020 -- visit RFC link below:

Ag Data Commons Submission Quick Start workflow diagram
December 4, 2019
New Submission Quick Start

Ag Data Commons has added a Quick Start summary to provide contributors with a brief overview of the data submission process. The diagram serves as an introduction to the full, step-by-step Data Submission Manual. If a dataset DOI is required, it is necessary to save the data files with Ag Data Commons.

Ag Data Commons - Relaunch
August 5, 2019
Ag Data Commons Relaunch - New Look, Feel, and Function

The National Agricultural Library’s Ag Data Commons has deployed updates to our look, feel, and function. And the BETA tag is gone!

Submit data* to the Ag Data Commons to meet FAIR data requirements of journals when you submit manuscripts, or public access requirements of funders such as NIFA.

Updates include:

  • New home page design and custom theme
  • Improved support for dataset collections
  • Added new 'Agricultural Economics' category
  • Added 'Software & Tools' tab
  • Improved citation of scholarly publications
  • Re-engineered field collections to support DKAN Paragraphs
  • Added ability to filter by Resources in addition to Datasets, with counts of each content type displayed

Watch for new webinars and training opportunities covering these changes. We welcome your comments and questions at: https://www.nal.usda.gov/ask-question.

*Or pointers to your data or software

Open Data and the Ag Data Commons Webinar
April 25, 2019
Open Data and the Ag Data Commons webinar with Auburn University

Open Data and the Ag Data Commons Webinar

In this webinar, National Agricultural Library (NAL) representatives Erin Antognoli and Cyndy Parr describe NAL’s data repository, Ag Data Commons, its purpose and how to use it. They also provide guidance on data dictionaries and data management planning. View the recorded webinar on YouTube and find the presentation on SlideShare.

Dr. Anne Mims Adrian, PUSH Open Data Project Manager, Auburn University, hosted the webinar on behalf of Auburn University.

Ag Data Commons entered in key FAIR data registries
February 12, 2019
Ag Data Commons entered in key registries to help discovery

Ag Data Commons supports open data discovery and access, and meets the criteria for inclusion in authoritative registries such as FAIRsharing, Re3Data, COPDESS, and DataCite, which collectively promote scientific standards, policies, and databases/repositories for the research community, funders, and publishers. We encourage citation of the Ag Data Commons in papers where the overall repository is mentioned, using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.83wDfe or https://doi.org/10.17616/R3G051 .