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The Global Mercury Observation System (GMOS) Project includes a specific Work Package aimed at developing tools (i.e. databases, catalogs, services) to collect GMOS datasets, harvest mercury databases, and offer services like search, view, and download spatial datasets from the GMOS portal (www.gmos.eu). The system will be developed under the framework of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE) Directive and the Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information, which both aim to make relevant, harmonized, high-quality geographic information available to support the formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies and activities that have a direct or indirect impact on the environment. Three databases have been proposed (on emissions, field data and model results), and each will be equipped with state-of-the-art, open-source software to allow for the highest performance possible. Web-based user-interfaces and prototype applications will be developed to demonstrate the potential of blending different datasets from different servers for environmental assessment studies. Several services (i.e. catalog browsers, WMS and WCS services, web GIS services) will be developed to facilitate data integration, data re-use, and data exchange within and beyond the GMOS project. Different types of measurement and model datasets provided by project partners and other sources will be integrated into PostgreSQL-PostGIS, harmonized by creating INSPIRE-compliant metadata and made available to a larger community of stakeholders, policy makers, scientists, and NGOs (as well as to other public and private institutions, as dictated by the Directive 2003/4/EC). Since interoperability is a central concept for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the Global Monitoring for Environmental and Security (GMES) and the INSPIRE Directive, guidelines developed in these three frameworks will be adopted. The use of standards will be a key concern throughout the encoding process. We will use the international standards for data and spatial schemas (ISO19107, ISO14825), for metadata (ISO19115:2003, ISO/DTS19139:2005, ISO15836) and for services (WMS 1.1.1, WFS 1.0, SLD 1.0, GML 3.1). On the other side, we will use XML for data exchange, together with SOAP, XSD, J2EE (for applications development) and W3C (for standard interfaces). With specific reference to GMES, the global database on mercury monitoring and the GMOS model outputs will be made available through a series of monitoring, forecast and re-analysis services. Finally, we hope the GMOS operational services will contribute to the Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (MACC) project, by providing access to atmospheric environmental services.

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is implemented by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) with the goal to ensure that decision in nine Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs) of Earth observations (EOs) can be informed by sustained Earth observations. Extracting actionable information from Earth observations often depends on research, and utilization of the societal benefits of EOs requires the involvement of science and research communities. Building a GEOSS responding to the needs of a wide range of users necessitates contributions from many science and technology (S&T) communities. The success of GEOSS depends on a outreach of GEO to the relevant S&T communities, and the outreach concept has a focus on demonstrated services for S&T communities. The GEO Work Plan includes several Tasks focusing on outreach to S&T communities, and most of the GEO Community of Practice have a strong S&T component. Infrastructure serving and linking S&T users communities and GEOSS has been developed and is integrated into a GEOSS S&T Service Suite. The GEOSS S&T Stakeholder Network facilitates input from S&T communities to GEO.

An important incentive for scientists and researchers is the recognition and renown given to them in citations of their work. While citation rules are well developed for the use of papers published by others, very little rules are available for the citation of data made available by others. Increasingly, citation of the source of data is also requested in the context of socially relevant topics, such as climate change and its potential impacts. Providing means for data citation would be a strong incentive for data sharing. Georeferenced data are crucial for addressing many of the burning societal problems and to support related interdisciplinary research. The lack of a widely accepted method for giving credit to those who make their data freely available and for tracking the use of data throughout their life-cycle hampers data sharing. Furthermore, only clear and transparent data citation allows other scientists to obtain the identical data to replicate findings or for further research.