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Physical samples and their associated (meta)data underpin scientific discoveries across disciplines, and can enable new science when appropriately archived. However, there are significant gaps in community practices and infrastructure that currently prevent accurate provenance tracking, reproducibility, and attribution. For the vast majority of samples, descriptive metadata is often sparse, inaccessible, or absent. Samples and associated (meta)data may also be scattered across numerous physical collections, data repositories, laboratories, data files, and papers with no clear linkages or provenance tracking as new information is generated over time. The Physical Samples Curation Cluster has therefore developed ‘A Scientific Author Guide for Publishing Open Research Using Physical Samples.’ This involved synthesizing existing practices, community feedback, and assessing real-world examples to identify community and infrastructure needs. We identified areas of work needed to enable authors to efficiently reference samples and related data, link related samples and data, and track their use. Our goal is to help improve the discoverability, interoperability, use of physical samples and associated (meta)data into the future. 

Tephra is a unique volcanic product that plays an unparalleled role in understanding past eruptions, the long-term behavior of volcanoes, and the effects of volcanism on climate and the environment. Tephra deposits also provide spatially widespread, extremely high-resolution time-stratigraphic markers across a range of sedimentary settings and are used by many disciplines (e.g. volcanology, seismotectonics, climate science, archaeology, ecology, public health and ash impact assessment). In the last two decades, tephra studies have become more interdisciplinary in nature but are challenged by a lack of standardization that often prevents comparison amongst various regions and across disciplines. To address this challenge, the global tephra community has come together through a series of workshops to establish best practice recommendations for tephra studies from sample collection through analysis and data reporting. This new standardized framework will facilitate consistent tephra documentation and parametrization, foster interdisciplinary communication, and improve effectiveness of data sharing among diverse communities of researchers. One specific goal is to use the best practice guidelines to inform digital tool and data repository development. Here we report on 1) a new set of templates for tephra sample documentation, geochemical method documentation and data reporting using recommended best- practice data and metadata fields, 2) a new tephra module added to StraboSpot, an open source geologic mapping and data- recording multi-platform software application, and 3) new implementations and cross-mapping of metadata requirements at SESAR (System for Earth Sample Registration) and EarthChem. Addition of tephra-specific fields to StraboSpot enables users to consistently collect and report essential tephra data in the field which is then automatically saved to an online data repository. A new tephra portal on the EarthChem website will allow users to follow simple workflows to register tephra samples at SESAR and submit microanalytical data to EarthChem. 

Abstract Sampling the natural world and built environment underpins much of science, yet systems for managing material samples and associated (meta)data are fragmented across institutional catalogs, practices for identification, and discipline-specific (meta)data standards. The Internet of Samples (iSamples) is a standards-based collaboration to uniquely, consistently, and conveniently identify material samples, record core metadata about them, and link them to other samples, data, and research products. iSamples extends existing resources and best practices in data stewardship to render a cross-domain cyberinfrastructure that enables transdisciplinary research, discovery, and reuse of material samples in 21st century natural science. 

There is growing recognition that unambiguous citation and tracking of physical samples allows previously impossible linking of samples to data and publications, linking and integration of sample-based observations across data systems, and paves the road towards advanced data mining of sample-based data. And in recent years, there has been an uptake in the use of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for physical samples to support such citation and tracking. The IGSN (International Geo Sample Number) is a PID for physical samples. It was originally developed for the solid earth sciences, and has evolved into an international PID system with members in five continents and a network of active allocating agents. It has been adopted by a growing number and range of stakeholders worldwide, including national geological surveys, research infrastructure providers, collection curators, researchers, and data managers, and by other disciplines that need to refer to physical samples. Nearly 6.9 million samples have been registered with IGSNs so far. The IGSN system uses the Handle System (Kahn and Wilensky 1995; see also Handle.Net ® ) and has an international organization, IGSN e.V., to manage its governance structure and the technical architecture. The recent expansion of the IGSN beyond the geosciences into other domains such as biodiversity, archeology, and material sciences confirms the power of its concept and implementation, but imposes substantial pressures on the existing capacity and capabilities of the IGSN architecture and its governing organization. Modifications to the IGSN organizational and technical architecture are necessary at this point to keep pace with the growing demand and expectations. These changes are also necessary to ensure trustworthy and sustainable services for PID registration and resolution in a maturing research data ecosystem. The essential criteria for a trustworthy system include an organizational foundation that ensures longevity, sustainability, proper governance, and regular quality assessment of registration services. It also includes a reliable and secure technical platform, based on open standards, which is sufficiently scalable and flexible to accommodate the growing diversity of specimen types, use cases, and stakeholder requirements. In 2018, a major planning project for the IGSN was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. An international group of experts participates in re-designing and improving the existing organization and technical architecture of the IGSN system, revising the current business model of the IGSN e.V. and professionalizing its operations. The goal is for the IGSN system to be able to respond to, and support in a sustainable manner, the rapidly growing demands of a global and increasingly multi-disciplinary user community, and to ensure that the IGSN will be a trustworthy, stable, and adaptable persistent identifier system for material samples, both technically and organizationally. The end result should also satisfy and facilitate participation across research domains, and will be a reliable component of the evolving research data ecosystem. Finally, it will ensure that the IGSN is recognized as a trusted partner by data infrastructure providers and the science community alike. 

Abstract Material samples are indispensable data sources in many natural science, social science, and humanity disciplines. More and more researchers recognize that samples collected in one discipline can be of great value for another. This has motivated organizations that manage a large number of samples to make their holdings accessible to the world. Currently, multiple projects are working to connect natural history and other samples managed by individual institutions or individuals into a universe of samples that follow FAIR principles. This poster reports the progress of the US NSF‐funded iSamples project, in the context of other efforts initiated by US DOE, DiSCCo, BCoN, and GBIF. By October 2021, we will also be able to present an iSamples prototype. We encourage individual organizations that hold material samples to get to know these projects and help shape these projects to realize the goal of a global linked sample cloud that connects all material samples and is accessible to all.