Generalized flow of data in ecological synthsis. Level 0 (L0) are incoming, original data, ideally, already archived in the repository with complete metadata and contributed by those close to the research. Level 1 (L1) data packages (also in the repository) are formatted according to a predefined model, in this case, ecocomDP. Researchers are able to use L1 as inputs with its code to speed their analyses and generate Level 2 (L2) data. An archive of the L2 data package in the same repository is recommended. Data sources and sinks may be a repository (e.g., EDI) another data provider (e.g., NEON) or aggregator (e.g., GBIF). Reproduced from