Measuring Metadata

Evaluating documentation is critical for identifying good examples within a collection, for laying out a path forward and for recording progress as the documentation is improved. In the end, whether or not users can use and trust your data is the final evaluation. There are quantitative and qualitative steps that can be used as signposts on the way to trustworthy data.

Metadata repositories are typically behind the scenes driving data discovery portals, business processes and decisions, and publishing houses. Measuring the metadata helps make improvements visible. This radar plots compares CrossRef metadata completeness during two time periods. It shows the results of a concerted effort to increase the number of ORCIDs in this publication metadata. ORCIDs are unique and persistent identifiers for people. Adding them to metadata helps those people get credit for all kinds of contributions to the research community.

Recuration Roundtable Subscription: Metadata Evaluation and Recuration Support
$1,200.00

The Recuration Roundtable is an exclusive membership program designed to provide professionals with the resources and expertise needed to optimize their data curation practices. Through a combination of comprehensive metadata evaluations, personalized consulting, and community-driven learning opportunities, we empower you to achieve your recuration goals and stay at the forefront of your field.

Annual Subscription Benefits:

  • Baseline Evaluation: Where are you starting from? This private evaluation of your DataCite metadata will help you identify areas to refine and optimize. It's a starting point! There's no need to feel bad. All repositories start somewhere.

  • Additional Metadata Evaluations: Two additional evaluations at month 4 and month 8 (tentatively) to show your recuration improvements over time.

  • 1-on-1 Consulting: Three hours of personalized consulting time to address your unique needs and goals.

  • Monthly Office Hours: Exclusive access to monthly open office hours for real-time support, discussions, and networking with industry leaders and peers.

  • Actionable Insights & Strategies: Receive tailored recommendations and strategies to immediately implement to improve your data curation processes.

  • Community Engagement: Connect with a network of professionals who share your passion for excellence in data curation.

Who Should Join?

  • Data Managers and Curators looking to enhance the quality and impact of their datasets.

  • Librarians and Archivists focused on optimizing metadata and curation practices for institutional repositories.

  • Organizations and Institutions striving for to show the links between the support they offer and the research products they produce.

How to Subscribe:

Unlock the full potential of your data with our annual subscription! Click the link below to join the Recuration Roundtable and transform your data curation strategy today.

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Continuous Improvement and Bright Spots

Universities with the most complete FAIR DataCite metadata are identified using a community convention for FAIR DataCite metadata that support findability with text and identifiers, connections and contacts.

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Make Improvement Visible

Adding ORCIDS connects people to the PID Graph!

The tools we use for creating metadata influence the content we can create and the completeness of that content. Measuring metadata makes it possible to compare metadata before and after changes to those tools. In this case, changing a publishing platform led to a increases in metadata content across the board!

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Find systemic changes

Big improvements across the board

Large metadata infrastructure providers like CrossRef and DataCite provide access to metadata from many providers some of which manage many repositories. It is important to be able to find Bright Spots in those groups with great metadata that can be used as good examples for others that are starting improvement efforts. The physics journal Stichting SciPost had the most complete metadata of almost 1700 CrossRef members measured using the CrossRef Participation Reports. Great job!

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Identify Bright Spots

Good work deserves recognition!

 

Change is hard

Metadata improvement is hard when it involves organizational change. The Heath brothers provided some great insight into organizational change in their great book Switch. This talk applies some of their insights to metadata improvement.

Metadata Improvement

Helping scientists and data providers understand how to improve their documentation involves understanding their requirements and identifying specific steps towards satisfying them. Explaining those steps with straightforward guidance, relevant community examples and rewards for moving forward are also important.

Resources

The presentation given at the AGU fall meeting by Ted Habermann focused on how repository re-curation could help repositories of all kinds respond to the guidance in the OSTP Public Access Memo published during August 2022.

Documentation Dialects

All scientific disciplines and communities understand that documenting their data makes it trustworthy and helps others use it with confidence. Many communities develop conventions for their documentation that enable sharing within the community, but can make it more difficult to share outside the community. Sometimes these dialects are called "standards" but, in the end they are all dialects of the same documentation language.

This schematic shows two metadata dialects each of which has related recommendations (R1 - R6) and overlap for elements supporting the discovery use case. This is not unusual as discovery systems are very similar across domains while metadata that supports use, understanding, and trust can be more domain specific. Many dialects include the concept of core metadata for cross-domain content and extensions for community specific elements.

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