As per our web page, the CRC’s mission is to “encourage and facilitate collaborative research and education initiatives throughout the region and, from these activities, to inform the management community and effectively foster improved science-based management of the Chesapeake Bay and its watersheds.”  For the scientists at our member institutions and, indeed, for scientists at any of the institutions and agencies partnering with the Chesapeake Bay Program, there is arguably no better way to further this mission than through the effective transfer of research contributions through peer-reviewed publication.  The peer-review process, although far from perfect, helps to improve both the work and its communication and, importantly, works strongly to rebuke the dissemination of so-called “alternative facts” – an oxymoronic term that has sadly entered our vocabulary in recent years.

In this light, the CRC is proud to announce the launching of a new initiative to establish a collection of citations for peer-reviewed publications from the CRC community — that is, the  “Recent CRC Community Publications” (RCCP) Collection.  We encourage you to see the RCCP web page for more information and, perhaps most importantly, to learn more about the simple submission process, the criteria for inclusion, and our perception of the “value added” by final development of the RCCP collection, relative to services already available from other on-line databases (such as Google Scholar or Web of Science).

The long-term goal is to develop a bibliographic database that will represent recent (2016 and forward) peer-reviewed publications in all major disciplines of natural science, social science, and engineering that contribute directly to understanding and managing the complex human-environmental ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed and are authored by members of our CBED community. We will be developing the database by reaching out to our partners for their own electronic files of bibliographic citations, asking them to help us “cull” for papers that have “direct relevance” to science and/or management of the complex Chesapeake ecosystem — i.e., to the development and application of better scientific understanding to improved management of the Chesapeake Bay, its watershed, or its living resources.  In this regard, the definition of “direct relevance” is at the discretion of the nominator; however, all submissions will be gently vetted by the CRC to exclude papers whose relevance will not be immediately apparent to either the Chesapeake or to managers.  In addition, our collection will be limited (at least initially*) to papers published after January 1, 2016, and with an author or authors who have registered themselves in our Chesapeake Bay Expertise Database.

With your assistance, the CRC intends to populate and maintain a database that will serve the entire CBP Partnership community (and others) as a means of “browsing” Chesapeake Bay-related research by author, keyword, home institution, and “CBP-goal relevance” while also providing the entire CBED membership with access to the entire electronic bibliographic data file. (This will be available to CBED registrants upon email request to the CRC.)

If you would like to know more about the database or to contribute to the collection, please contact the CRC Director by sending an email to <Citation-collection@chesapeake.org>.  We are looking especially for CRC partnering scientists who may be willing to share relevant *.bib or *.enl files from their own electronic databases.

*NOTE:  At a future time, and depending on the success of the current initiative, the CRC may develop a separate database of “Selected Publications” that will include papers from any year or authors, based on nominations from CBED members and and selection by a selection committee yet to be determined.  Criteria will be that the paper be of outstanding lasting value toward the CRC’s and CBP partnership’s missions and goals.