We are proud to announce that the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Physical Samples Curation Cluster was awarded the 2026 ESIP Collaboration of the Year at the January 2026 Meeting. The award honors four years of developing the physical sample citation guidelines, now published in Nature Scientific Data, led by Joan Damerow (Damerow et al., 2025 doi:10.1038/s41597-025-05295-z). The Collaboration of the Year award recognizes achievements in works created collaboratively that align with ESIP’s core values and who “step up as excellent data stewards, community organizers, and enthusiastic volunteers” (Gentes, 2026).
Furthermore, these guidelines were formally endorsed by ESIP in March of 2026. This endorsement from ESIP demonstrates community trust in the recommendations and promotes adoption. Learn more about ESIP endorsements here.
The ESIP Physical Samples Curation Cluster surveyed existing best practices, challenges, and needs gathered through community feedback for research with physical samples spanning geologic cores, water samples, or biological specimens. Based on surveys of current practices and community feedback, the guidelines for researchers include providing rich metadata, using and citing identifiers for samples, and publishing samples in datasets. The framework aims to facilitate a standard way of publishing, giving credit for, tracking, and connecting sample information, thereby improving the tracking, reproducibility, and attribution of data.
Researchers working with physical samples should consider adding these guidelines to their workflows to help better connect their work to the global ecosystem of sample data and promote data reuse. The summarized version is on the ESIP award page while the paper is available on Zenodo.
Damerow, J.E., Raia, N.H., Stanley, V. et al. Opening doors to physical sample tracking and attribution in Earth and environmental sciences. Sci Data 12, 1047 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-05295-z
Featured Image Credit: Gentes, Z. (2026). Celebrating our 2026 ESIP Award Winners. Earth Science Information Partners. Accessed via https://www.esipfed.org/celebrating-our-2026-esip-award-winners/