GEOROC Database

Terms of Use

Graphic for CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

GEOROC data are compiled from published, peer-reviewed literature and are provided here under Creative Commons regulations (CC BY-SA 4.0). Use of GEOROC data compilations requires appropriate citation of all data sources. GEOROC datasets can only be distributed under the same license as the original. See our citation guidelines for further information.

By using the GEOROC data you agree to and accept these terms.

Disclaimer

All data held within the GEOROC database have been harvested from peer-reviewed publications, comprising decades of international geochemical literature.

The database is regularly supplemented with current publications. We take great effort to compile high-quality published data and to report all additional information on samples, analytical methods, reference materials and analytical uncertainties.

Note that only the information recorded in the respective publications can be entered into the GEOROC database. In specific cases geographic coordinates may have been extracted from sample location maps as provided by the authors. Wherever needed, mineral and rock names that did not comply with rock and mineral names from BGS and, respectively, IMA vocabularies, were modified to meet these nomenclature standards. However, the original names given by authors in a publication are maintained in the dataset comment.

We cannot take responsibility for missing (meta-) data or analytical quality. We are aware that some geochemical data — in particular from older literature sources and using older analytical methods — may not meet current quality standards. Also, the accuracy and precision of geographic coordinates as given in publications may be compromised. We therefore urge all users of GEOROC to critically evaluate downloaded datasets and to be mindful of potential shortcomings with respect to geographic coordinates, analytical precision and accuracy and other metadata.

Read more on how you can contribute to improving GEOROC and to ensuring consistently high-quality data going forward.

GEOROC compiles data from published, peer-reviewed literature. GEOROC database curation and IT development is the focus of the DIGIS project funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) at the Göttingen Geoscience Center (GZG) of the Georg August University of Göttingen and the State and University Library (SUB) at Göttingen. GEOROC data are provided free of charge and we ask that you use our data products for scientific and educational purposes only. When intending to use GEOROC data products for commercial purposes we request that users contact GEOROC/DIGIS staff at digis-info[at]uni-goettingen.de for conditions and permission.

Use of data compilations downloaded from GEOROC is only permitted under the regulations of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0):

  • You are free to copy, remix, transform and redistribute the data in any medium and format.
  • However, in doing so, you must give appropriate credit to GEOROC as well as to the original data sources. This includes proper referencing in a publication’s list of cited references (see below).
  • If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

Data provided through the GEOROC Data Repository are covered by separate licensing requirements as stipulated by the provider of the dataset(s).

Please follow these guidelines for how to cite GEOROC data.

Data Download from Database Query

To cite the GEOROC database, please reference its URL in text and in figure captions: https://georoc.eu/. Please cite the specific download by giving the date and, if possible, parameters of the query. A summary of the query criteria may be viewed on the download page.

Example for manuscript text and figures:

"Data were downloaded from the GEOROC database (https://georoc.eu/) on 1 March 2022, using the following parameters: geological setting = Continental Flood Basalt: Etendeka Province and rock name = basalt."

You should also cite the original references that contribute to the downloaded dataset. These references are included in every GEOROC download. For large datasets, we strongly encourage creating a secondary bibliography which is accepted as a supplementary material file by many journals. This type of citation helps ensure that appropriate credit is given to the scientists who originally generated the data.

Example for citation in text and reference lists in scientific publications:

Sarbas B, Nohl U (2008) The GEOROC database as part of a growing geoinformatics network. In: Brady, SR, Sinha AK, Gundersen LC (eds): Geoinformatics 2008 - Data to Knowledge, Proceedings: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations, Report 2008–5172, pp. 42/43 (2008).

You may also cite:
Klöcking M, Sturm A, Sarbas B, Kallas L, Möller-McNett S, Lehnert K, Elger K, Horstmann W, Kurzawe D, Willbold M, Wörner G (2024) GEOROC 2.0: a Globally Connected Geochemical Database to Facilitate Interdisciplinary, Data-Driven Research. MinWien2023, Vienna, Austria, 17–21 September 2023.

Citing Precompiled Files and Expert Datasets from the GEOROC Data Repository

Example: Cite the dataset with its dataset DOI as a standard reference of your publication. The citation should include the following elements:

  • Creator(s) (Publication Year): Title. Publisher. Identifier. Version.

and

  • DIGIS Team, 2021, "GEOROC Compilation: Rock Types", https://doi.org/10.25625/2JETOA, Goettingen Research Online / Data, V1.

You may also cite specific files within a dataset, for example:
DIGIS Team, 2021, "2021-11-2JETOA_ADAKITE.csv", GEOROC Compilation: Rock Types, https://doi.org/10.25625/2JETOA/AWTDMI, Goettingen Research Online / Data, V1.

How to Filter

We provide compositional filters for all analytes in the database in two ways:

  1. For most-used data (major elements, a typical set of trace elements and isotope ratios), we offer a filter based on minimum and maximum values. Samples that do not have analytical values for a particular analyte will not be selected. Some elemental concentrations are reported in the original publications in different form, such as. FeO or Fe2O3, some even Fe3O4, or Fe atomic %) or when trace elements are given as ppm, µg/g, ppb or wt%. For these cases, we have recalculated all data to a single analytical unit in order to allow selecting corresponding minimum and maximum values for filters. However, when downloading selected data, the original analytical units or analytes are transferred as given in the original literature together with the recalculated values.
  2. All data can be selected according to “must have”, i.e. only data are selected by this filter for which compositional values are included in a sample’s analysis.