O2A Documentation

Viewer Best Practises ​

When having a viewer promoted to be publicly listed on any O2A portal, it should meet some basic quality criteria. This documents lists them.

  • use the English language
  • name things properly and consistently

Viewer ​

  • have an appropriate abstract
  • have at least one contributor listed, including contact details
  • have a thumbnail (will be asked for during the promotion process)

Layers/Services ​

This is especially true for layers/services you control (e.g. on your own SDI or using the O2A SDI).

  • have proper metadata (abstract incl. references/citations, title, keywords)
  • have good styles/symbology/colours, especially good default ones
    • avoid rainbow/jet colour palettes, use colour palettes from cmocean instead, e.g. viridis
      • Hawkins, E. Scrap rainbow colour scales. Nature 519, 291 (2015). (https://doi.org/10.1038/519291d)
      • The Rainbow Colour Map (repeatedly) considered harmful. (egu.eu)
      • Perceptual colormaps in matplotlib for oceanography, SciPy Conference 2015, Austin, TX, July 8, 2015. (YouTube)
      • Thyng, K. M., Greene, C. A., Hetland, R. D., Zimmerle, H. M., & DiMarco, S. F. (2016). True colors of oceanography. Oceanography, 29(3), 10. (PDF)
    • include your basemap choice into symbology decisions
  • have popups and right sidebar styled using metadata templates
  • have proper legends

Data ​

  • have citations, references, DOIs where applicable and possible