Encyclopedia of Earth

The "Encyclopedia of Earth" (also EoE) is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The "Encyclopedia" is described as a free, fully searchable collection of articles written by scholars, professionals, educators, and other approved experts, who collaborate and review each others' work. The articles are written in non-technical language and are intended to be useful to students, educators, scholars, and professionals, as well as to the general public. [http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/about "The Encyclopedia of Earth"] , Cutler J. Cleveland, Editor (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment).]

The Encyclopedia of Earth is a component of the larger Earth Portal (part of the Digital Universe project), which is a constellation of subject-specific information portals that contain news services, structured metadata, a federated environmental search engine, and other information resources. The technology platform for the "Encyclopedia of Earth" was designed, built, and maintained by ManyOne Networks. The EoE was launched in September 2006 with about 360 articles, and as of October 2007 had over 4000 articles.

Authoring and publishing process

Articles are written, edited, and published in a two-step process:
# Content for the "Encyclopedia" is created, maintained, and governed by group of experts via a restricted-access wiki that uses a modified version of Mediawiki.
# Upon completion, content is reviewed and approved by Topic Editors, and then published to the free public site.

Content may be continuously revised and updated on the authors' wiki, but revised articles require review and reapproval before revisions are displayed on the public site.

The "Encyclopedia" has a stated policy regarding neutrality and fairness [http://www.eoearth.org/eoe/neutrality "The Encyclopedia of Earth neutrality policy"] , Cutler J. Cleveland, Editor (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment).] that requires articles, when touching upon any issue of controversy, to represent every different view on a subject that attracts a significant portion of adherents, with each such view and its arguments or evidence being expressed as fairly and sympathetically as possible. According to this neutrality policy, the "Encyclopedia" itself does not advocate positions on environmental issues.

Copyright policy

Content is governed by the Creative Commons license known as "Attribution-Share Alike". This license permits anyone to (1) copy, distribute, and display material, (2) revise, edit, remix, tweak, and build upon material, and to make commercial use of material, subject to these conditions:

* Attribution. Users must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
* Share Alike. If users alter, transform, or build upon this work, they may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to the "Attribution-Share Alike" license.

People

The authors and topic editors are made up of scientists, educators, and professionals within the environmental field. The qualifications of applicants are reviewed by the Environmental Information Coalition (EIC) Stewardship Committee, the governing body of the Earth Portal, before they are given access to the author's wiki. The Stewardship Committee comprises Karim Ahmed (Global Children's Health and Environment Fund), Juan Pablo Arce (NatureServe), Brian Black (Pennsylvania State University), Cutler J. Cleveland (Boston University), Sidney Draggan, J. Emmett Duffy (College of William and Mary), Ida Kubiszewski (University of Vermont), Mark McGinley (Texas Tech University), Emily Monosson, Stephen Nodvin (Mount Ida College), and Peter Saundry (National Council for Science and the Environment).

The Editorial Staff as of October 2007 consisted of Cutler J. Cleveland (Editor-in-Chief), Laura De Angelo (Managing Editor), Maggie Surface (Editorial Assistant). Cutler Cleveland is a Professor of Geography and Environment at Boston University and Editor-in-Chief of the "Encyclopedia of Energy" (Elsevier Science, 2004), the "Dictionary of Energy" (Elsevier Science, 2005), and the journal "Ecological Economics".

The International Advisory Board for the Encyclopedia is listed as Rita Colwell, Robert W. Corell, Robert Costanza, Mohamed H. A. Hassan, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Andrew J. Hoffman, Stephen P. Hubbell, Simon A. Levin, Bonnie J. McCay, David W. Orr, Rajendra K. Pachauri, Frank Sherwood Rowland, and B. L. Turner.

References

ee also

*Museum of the Earth

External links

* [http://www.eoearth.org/ Encyclopedia of Earth Public Page]