Metadata

I was a contributor to this work and am recognized as an author on the related publication. Human biomedical datasets that are critical for research and clinical studies to benefit human health also often contain sensitive or potentially identifying information of individual participants. Thus, care must be taken when they are processed and made available to comply with ethical and regulatory frameworks and informed consent data conditions. To enable and streamline data access for these biomedical datasets, the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) Data Use and Researcher Identities (DURI) work stream developed and approved the Data Use Ontology (DUO) standard.

WEBINAR: Negotiating Open Metadata into your Contracts Contract negotiations are important tools for incentivizing publishers and vendors to move to more open business models. Researchers and research institutions have been working together to best plan for and accomplish this shared vision. As part of this transformative process, open metadata must be included to ensure broad access to scholarly resources and other research outputs. As part of Metadata 20/20’s “Your Turn” campaign, the community has expressed interest in exploring and sharing how open metadata can be negotiated into contract language for those accessing and using scholarly resources and other research outputs.

What do researchers, publishers, librarians, and data repository managers understand about the role of metadata in their work? Metadata is descriptive information about research resources themselves, and it provides important insights for discovering new knowledge, organizing resources, and understanding who the experts are in any field. In this comprehensive study, these constituents responded to a survey to reveal their awareness, knowledge and use of metadata. The results were analyzed and published in the peer reviewed academic journal, Quantitative Science Studies by MIT Press.

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly put forth 17 goals to “transform our world”. These goals aim to tackle the big, important problems facing society. Scholarly research is critical to ensuring our collective response is timely and enduring. Open metadata is the foundational infrastructure that fuels innovation and ensures that research is available, relevant, and used by everyone who needs it. Connected metadata bridges the gaps between systems and communities.

WANTED: PID for an object that is not too big and not too small. One that provides just the information that I seek, and is in a language that I can understand. Not too old. Accompanied by data and resources. Available in my country. Open access only need apply. What would a PID be without its accompanying metadata? Rich data help fulfill the FAIR promises by making information more easily findable, and by providing clarity on the constraints around being accessible (how?

In 2020, FORCE11 created a year-long blog series about scholarly infrastructure. Force11 is a community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that grew organically to help facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing. There goal is to create a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. In March, in my role as Project Upholder of Metadata 2020, I chatted with Jennifer Kemp about the importance of metadata, the lifeblood of this infrastructure, a ubiquitous and foundational component of scholarly communications.