# Quality Assurance

Quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) is a critical step that is used to ensure the validity of data in the database and of the analyses that use these data. When conducting QA/QC, your data access level needs to be elevated to “manager”.

1. Open citation in Mendeley
2. Locate citation in BETYdb
   * Select `Use`
   * Select `Show`
   * Check that author, year, title, journal, volume, and page

     information is correct
   * Check that links to URL and PDF are correct, using DOI if

     available
   * If any information is incorrect, click ’edit’ to correct
3. Check that site(s) at bottom of citation record match site(s) in

   paper

   * Check that latitude and longitude are consistent with

     manuscript, are in decimals not degrees, and have appropriate

     level of precision
   * Click on site name to verify any additional information site

     information that is present
   * Enter any additional site level information that is found
4. Select

   [treatments](http://www.betydb.org/treatments/) from

   menu bar

   * Check that there is a control treatment
   * Ensure that treatment name and definition are consistent with

     information in the manuscript
   * Under “treatments from all citations associated with associated

     sites”, ensure that there is no redundancy (i.e. if another

     citation uses the same treatments, it should not be listed

     separately)
   * If managements are listed, make sure that managment-treatment

     associations are correct
5. Check [managements](http://www.betydb.org/managements/) if

   there are any listed on the treatments page.

   * If yield data has been collected, ensure that required

     managements have been entered
   * If managements have been entered, ensure that they are

     associated with the correct treatments
6. Click [Yields](http://www.betydb.org/yields/) or

   [Traits](http://www.betydb.org/traits/) to check

   data.

   * Check that means, sample size, and statistics have been entered

     correctly
   * If data has been transformed, check that transformation was

     correct in the associated google spreadsheet (or create a new

     google spreadsheet following instructions)
   * For any trait data that requires a covariate