Add an NSF Award badge to your README page
The EarthCube Throughput project, led by Simon Goring, is using EarthCube efforts as a use case for creating linkages among code, research datasets, and awards. To make several aspects of EarthCube projects easier to find and link, Throughput is asking EarthCube projects with GitHub repositories to add NSF Award badges to repo README files. The reward for investigators is better discoverability of linked resources in Throughput and beyond, and perhaps extended use of work accomplished.
Link an Award to Code by Adding a Badge. As an example, adding the markdown:
[](https://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1928366)
…will add a badge to the top of your README.md that allows people to click through to your Award page at NSF (be sure to replace the Award ID in this example). This also lets Throughput find your repository and help others find it through the Throughput interface.
Here’s the Throughput API GitHub page as an example: https://github.com/throughput-ec/throughput_api.
If you have repositories that use existing EarthCube resources, or other open APIs that you’d like added to Throughput, just enter the award ID, repository, and researcher name(s) here.
Link Data to Code, Too. Throughput project people are also eager to link research databases and other data resources to code repositories such as GitHub or GitLabs. In fact, Throughput has already created linkages between more than 2,300 data catalogs and over 60,000 code repositories. Enter your own “data resource – to – code repository” connection information at the same input site for Throughput linking.
Goring says, “You can see some of our work at http://throughputdb.com, where we have a tool to search for databases and their associated code repositories using keywords. Much of our work is done by scraping GitHub using simple searches: for example, ‘NSF’ and the award number.” This method may be implemented by other tools as well, which can help make the work within a repository live longer by promoting reuse and proper credit.
Note that projects supported by multiple awards can credit each award appropriately, and the best way to do this is with a separate badge and NSF link for each award.
This EarthCube template can help your GitHub repository. If you’re starting or revising a GitHub repo for an EarthCube project, please consider using or borrowing from this repository template and README file, assembled by the EarthCube Office tech team and Simon Goring, to help projects be consistent and use best practices: https://github.com/EarthCube/Template.
– Ouida Meier, Simon Goring, and Stephen Richard