Open Access Week 2021: Author Spotlight #1

NOT PUBLISHED

OA Fund Recipient Spotlight: Frederick Bingham, Dept of Physics and Physical Oceanography

Dr Bingham's article, Sea Surface Salinity Seasonal Variability in the Tropics from Satellites, Gridded In Situ Products and Mooring Observations, was published in the open access journal Remote Sensing. Read it here: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13010110

Research summary from the authors:

"Surface salinity in the ocean (SSS) is an essential variable for understanding the climate and the global transport of fresh water. It has been measured by satellite for the past decade by a series of three missions launched by NASA and the European Space Agency. When a variable is measured by satellite like that, it is very important to validate the data it returns. Validation involves comparing the values the satellite measures with some kind of ground truth measurement. This has been done in a variety of ways for these missions. Across the tropical oceans there is deployed a vast array of buoys (123 of them!) that measure SSS on an hourly basis. The record lengths vary, but some of them are longer than 20 years. These buoys have been used as ground truth for SSS validation in a number of studies. What the present study has done is to utilize the length of the records to determine the seasonal ups and downs of SSS, and compare them to what the satellites measure. This involves determining from each measurement system on average which months have the highest or lowest SSS and what the range between highest and lowest is. We then compare these quantities between the buoys and satellites to understand which satellite systems are most accurate on a seasonal time scale."

Why did you decide to publish open access?

"I decided to publish this in an open access journal because it gives me the greatest reach, and allows the most people to read it without any barriers."

What advice do you have for others who want to publish open access?

"For those who thinking about publishing in an open access journal, I would advise them to go ahead. Depending on the field, it can be more expensive, though, so you may have to budget funds for it."

Randall Library will be spotlighting authors who've received our funding to publish in open access journals all week long! Find more information about our OA Week 2021 events here: https://lib.uncw.edu/OAWeek2021