The Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) program has revolutionized the way the Academic Fleet for oceanographic research goes about the process of data stewardship. In 2009, the NSF Oceanographic Instrumentation and Technical Services Program funded the R2R program as a 4-way collaborative effort between data services groups at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Florida State University (FSU). The mission of the R2R Program was to document and preserve the underway data from every cruise in the U.S. academic research fleet. R2R's work plan included uploading and classifying the end-of-cruise data distributions from each vessel operator; publishing an online catalog of vessels, cruises, datasets, and science parties; preparing and submitting the data to the NOAA Data Centers for long-term preservation; assessing the quality of selected data sets and providing quality feedback to operators; creating a standard set of data products including quality-controlled ship-track navigation, geophysical profiles (gravity, magnetics, bathymetry), and real-time meteorology/near-surface oceanography; and developing an event logging application to document at-sea operations. The R2R program team worked in close collaboration with the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) Office, vessel technicians, NOAA Centers, other NSF-funded ocean data systems, disciplinary specialists in the research community, and international partners. All UNOLS operating institutions, as well as the NSF-supported Coast Guard Cutter (CGC) Healy, now routinely submit their cruise data to R2R. R2R has achieved its primary objectives during its initial five years of operation. Renewed funding will enable transition from a "development" focus to an "operational" focus. Work in the next five years includes continued operation of core infrastructure developed in the first phase of funding, as well as selected new tasks designed to improve R2R's products and services in response to community feedback.
Benefits of R2R will extend to key stakeholders including vessel operators, research scientists, cyberinfrastructure developers, funding agencies, and the general public. R2R will provide tools and feedback to help marine technicians improve data quality and documentation, and will free them from the need to maintain a local data archive. A central cruise catalog for the academic fleet will ensure that original field data from every cruise are routinely preserved and disseminated, improving access for scientists and the public and simplifying funding agency efforts to enforce data sharing requirements. Standardization of data acquisition procedures across the fleet will facilitate integration with observations from other platforms such as NSFs Ocean Observatories Initiative, while enabling new synthesis efforts for a global ocean that is vast and sparsely explored.
