New Process to Endorse Best Practices

In 2020, Hermes (2020) described the need for the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) to express: 1) that it endorses practices available in Ocean Best Practice System (OBPS), and 2) the process(es) employed by GOOS to grant these endorsements. Such endorsement processes are a key step in the development of a best practice (Przeslawski et al, 2023): through them, an organization makes a definitive claim that it believes the practice is “worthy of endorsement”, providing evidence and justification for that claim.

Why should organizations seek to endorse their practices? Many organizations expend significant resources to create and/or identify practices they consider best. Communicating these efforts and their outcomes across the global ocean community is a considerable challenge, and searching for definitive collections of endorsed practices is still inefficient. Through the undated OBPS procedures, organizations have a clear path if they want to seek endorsement.

To qualify as endorsed, at a minimum, a practice is expected to:

1. have completed a rigorous and transparent community review process whereby comments are publicly invited, adjudicated and actioned by the author(s) and where these actions have been independently assessed or are available on request;
2. has been successfully used by multiple institutions;
3. be approved by the leadership of the relevant network, expert team or institution;
4. be shown as fit for the purposes it aims to fulfill;
5. be available and identifiable within the OBPS repository;
6. be updated at relevant timeframes or have a maintenance plan for future updates; 
7. include description of estimating uncertainty or heterogeneity of a quantity (if applicable); and,
8. follow recommendations for metadata standards and file formats for archiving in international data and information repositories.

With these completed and verified steps, OBPS will note a practice has been endorsed in the OBPS records. This will give the practice widespread visibility.

For more information, please see Bushnell & Pearlman (eds) (2024) Ocean Best Practices System Endorsement: Guidance for the Ocean Community, Version 2024-03-20. Ocean Best Practices System, 8pp.

Download the associated flyer here.