Ocean Best Practices
The Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS) is a global initiative dedicated to improving and standardising practices for collecting, analysing, and sharing ocean data and information across a wide range of ocean stakeholders.
The Ocean Best Practices System
IMOS is an active contributor to the OBPS, which provides an opportunity space for the centralised and coordinated improvement of ocean practices throughout the entire ocean observing value chain.
The OBPS Repository is an online, open access document repository, designed to provide a discovery point for the ocean community to search, find, and permanently archive ocean practices, from observation to application.
This repository also serves as a critical foundation for building capacity within the ocean community. It is maintained by the International Oceanographic Data and information Exchange (IODE) of the UNESCO-IOC as an IOC (IODE, GOOS) co-ordinated activity.
Methodological documents
To ensure the dissemination, visibility, uptake, and archiving of IMOS-associated practices in an open and accessible manner, the IMOS office submits all its methodological documents (including practices and Facility QA/QC documentation) into the IMOS Community Repository of the OBPS.
By making these documents openly accessible, IMOS contributes to the broader requirement for collaborative ocean observing to adhere to well-defined and reproducible methods.
This process promotes transparency, interoperability, and reproducibility of data, which strengthens trust, facilitates data sharing, supports collaboration, and drives consensus building and innovation across the ocean community.
IMOS endorsement
IMOS has the capability to recommend practices for endorsement to the OBPS. Such an endorsement provides the community with clear guidance on practices that have undergone rigorous community review and consensus-building.
Endorsed practices not only promote collaboration, efficiency, and excellence in ocean research and management but also gain widespread visibility and recognition.
IMOS has developed a framework for the IMOS community to support the submission of practices to the OBPS.
