JERICO-S3 offers Virtual Access to AquaDocs: a joint open-access thematic document repository

JERICO-S3 offers Virtual Access to AquaDocs: a joint open-access thematic repository covering science, technology, management and conservation, and socio-economic and legal aspects.

AquaDocs is the open-access joint repository of the UNESCO/IOC InternationaI Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) and the International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC) with support from the FAO Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts. It is a thematic repository covering the natural marine, coastal, estuarine /brackish and freshwater environments and includes all aspects of the science, technology, management and conservation of these environments, their organisms and resources, and the economic, sociological and legal aspects.

AquaDocs digital repository supports document search for JERICO CORE through the JERICO Virtual Access (VA) scalable framework that allows the visibility and access of the JERICO-S3 resources which aligns with the VA objective to provide and facilitate centralised access to JERICO-S3 RI resources (data, products, services, best practices, VRE tools, platforms, e-libraries and e-training modules).

AquaDocs makes aquatic and marine science information Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR).  It serves more than 130 organisations and projects and invites other ocean data projects and organisations to use its services.  Examples include the Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) and Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) and recently, the UN Ocean Decade for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 has agreed to use AquaDocs as the repository for Decade publications.   It has some 37,000 records and to now, total downloads number 3,287,296.  It is indexed by all the major internet services such as Google Scholar, Scopus, OpenAIRE, ASFA etc. which extends its content discoverability. In addition to JERICO-CORE, the AquaDocs repository has also extended its content discoverability through other modern data systems, in particular by the IODE’s Ocean Data and Information System (ODIS) (https://oceaninfohub.org/odis/) – a global federation of partners sharing ocean (meta)data and information.

Envisioned developments include the provision of the interface in multiple languages, translation of all User Guides,  and training course videos to be available on the interface, and content harvesting/import to be introduced.

AquaDocs stakeholders include among many, science research, education and policymakers; it is the primary digital open-access repository covering global aquatic and marine science documents.