Croplands Research Database is an open access research database collecting scientific research outputs about the greenhouse gases in croplands. This database is a result of partnership between Kansas State Universirty (K-State) Library and Global Research Alliance (GRA). Croplands Research Database supports the Global Research Alliance's mission  of reducing greenhouse gas intensity and improving overall production efficiency of croplands systems.

Background to Croplands Research Database                              

This database was a result of intentions by librarians at K-State University Library to collaborate  with Dr. Chuck Rice  an agronomist  at K-State University and other researchers in the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases. Dr. Chuck Rice is the US. Representative on GRA, a global alliance of more than 30 countries established in 2009 after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The goals of Croplands Research Database are to create a publicly accessible database with literature about the greenhouse gases in croplands; and also the repository  would collect similar research in the Global Research Alliance member countries. It was also desired that the database be a repository of croplands data.

Croplands Research Database Platform

The repository interface is a simple pilot interface with 4 top menus and allows users to browse records by country, climate and cropping system and represents content from 38 countries. The database is still under development, the content will include conference papers, white papers, videos, and data sets . The repository uses a controlled vocabulary for country, climate and cropping system , for example the Köppen Climate Classification System  which is over 100 years old was chosen as a controlled vocabulary for climate. In the pilot phase about 1200 records were processed.

Current and future developments

The team is working on ensuring that Croplands Research Database makes its data available to other systems through widely accepted open protocols such as the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. The team is also working to clean up database records and improve search and data input functionality.

To learn more about the ‘Croplands Research Database’ visit http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=lib_fac