Why should I participate in IGMETS?

aka:  "What do you / your program / your institution get out of participating in this effort?"

 See also:  "How is IGMETS different from other [similar] initiatives?"

Scientific Benefits:

  1. IGMETS is a chance to participate in a unique, global and basin-scale, spatio-temporal study of over 200 biogeochemical and plankton time series.  How do interannual trends in your site(s) and region compare to those of other sites in the same region, across regions and ocean basins, or even globally?
  2. This report may brush upon interesting new results that can be further pursued in a more focused, peer-reviewed article by you and others you have met through the IGMETS report preparation.

Political Benefits:

  1. The IOC-UNESCO publication produced by IGMETS will land on the desks of hundreds of institutional leaders, policy makers, and funding authorities from around the world.
  2. In this report, participant lists, time series tables, and by-country participation maps will highlight your time series.  A person of importance finding your time series in this international effort could bring your efforts to their attention for the first time.  (Likewise, what if they look for and do not find your site?)

Future Collaboration Benefits:

  1. Many of the sites participating in this study are currently not "Google discoverable" and were only discovered only by word-of-mouth from multiple other investigators and working groups that knew of them and reported them to IGMETS.  The IGMETS metadata directory will be a tool of discovery and contact information for collaboration and research opportunities.
  2. Even if Google currently can find your site, can it return it as part of a list of "show me all time series with at least 15 years of phytoplankton data"?  The IGMETS metabase will, and may be equally as useful to your own searches.