If your grant involves the generation of morphological data matrices and/or 2D or 3D images that you would like to deposit as part of your publication, then MorphoBank can work with you to add text and budget to your grant proposal. Such contributions from the community help to sustain MorphoBank as an important scientific resource.
Curation
Almost all data entered into the PBDB is derived from References. Thus, the suggested funding model for data deposition is based on the number of References you estimate you will need to enter into the PBDB. For a project with less than 500 references, we suggest including a flat fee of $5000. For those projects above 500 references, we suggest the following formula: total amount requested = $4000 * years of project + $2 * number of references. For example, for a project that estimates entering 1000 references over the course of a 3 year project would result in: ($4000 * 3) + ($2 * 1000) = $12000 + $2000 =$14,000. You should characterize this as a fee for your data repository in your Budget Justification.
Data Management Plan
Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is committed to being a long term repository for paleontological data. As such, PBDB needs ongoing support to maintain the level of service that you have come to expect. We plan to continue to offer all of our basic services for free, but ask that if you plan to use the PBDB as a repository or tool for grant funded projects, that you include a line item in your grant to support the PBDB. The following prose is designed to help you write your Data Management Plan, Broader Impacts statement, Budget, and Budget Justification for your grants. While specifically crafted with the US National Science Foundation in mind (NSF), it should prove useful for whatever funding agency or foundation from which you are requesting funding.
As noted above, you can and should highlight the PBDB in your Data Management Plan (DMP). Some sample boilerplate text is below. The text highlights that PBDB is a long term, NSF funded project with high visibility in the paleontological community worldwide. Your DMP should also mention the funding you are including based on the budget model outlined above as well.
Sample Text
Paleobiology Database (PBDB) data and metadata are open and available to all, except for those data under embargo for current research projects. PBDB allows users to embargo data for up to 5 year for exclusive use, when it becomes available for all. PBDB makes its data available through its web site (paleobiodb.org) and its fully documented API (paleobiodb.org/data1.2/). All data generated in the proposed project will be made freely available to all users and will not be subject to embargo. PBDB data are available for re-use under CC BY 4.0 International License, which makes the data freely available to all with attribution. PBDB also encourages users of the data to cite the original published sources for the data as well.
PBDB utilizes well-established data system management and maintenance plans. Data are protected by multiple measures including redundant disk storage, offsite mirroring, file system snapshotting, regular tape backup, and duplication of the backup set. PBDB is an actively-funded, community-recognized geoinformatics cyberinfrastructure repository. In the event that future operational funds are not secured, data will be transferred to one or more public academic work repositories. Open-source code for the PBDB API web services and R module are backed up and archived in a public source code repository (Github) as well as in local distributed source control systems.
PBDB also allows researchers to archive data sets that are used for particular research projects and will mint DOIs to uniquely identify these data archives for future reference and re-use. PBDB also allows future researchers to not only access these data archives, but to re-query the PBDB using the exact same parameters to assess how additional future data input has affected the results derived from these archived data sets.
While input of data to PBDB is free of charge, PBDB strongly encourages grant funded users to include funding in their grant proposals to help ensure safe, secure, and free distribution of these data for future researchers. Funds requested in this proposal follow the suggested funding model provided by the PBDB.
New Feature Development
While we are very proud of PBDB as it is today, we understand that there are many more things PBDB could be doing to further the cause of paleontological data. If you would like additional features to be added to the PBDB, and would like PBDB programmers to do this, or to help you do this, we can help you to determine what that would cost. This calculation entails estimating the number of hours your project would cost. Programmer costs are approximately $50/hour. So, a project that would take 500 programmer hours would cost $50 * 500 = $25,000. Again, we are happy to help you estimate these costs when you are preparing your budget. As you are writing your grant, if you envision additional PBDB programming, please contact us at info@paleobiodb.org and we will work with you on adding that into your grant as a direct expense.