sbtools: An R package for ScienceBase

Science is an increasingly collaborative endeavor. In an era of Web-enabled research, new tools reduce barriers to collaboration across traditional geographic and disciplinary divides and improve the quality and efficiency of science. Collaborative online code management has moved project collaboration from a manual process of email and thumb drives into a traceable, streamlined system where code can move directly from the command-line onto the Web for discussion, sharing, and open contributions. Within the USGS, however, data have no such analogous system. To bring data collaboration and sharing within the USGS to the next level, we are missing crucial components. The sbtools project team built sbtools, an R interface to ScienceBase [...]