Metadata

Ensure metadata conforms to repository and/or appropriate discipline standards; adjust metadata to improve findability and accessibility; and improve documentation to make data more understandable, interoperable and reusable.

Enrich Your Metadata

  • Name all authors and contributors
    • List ORCID identifier numbers for all authors
    • Include institutional affiliations and contact information (ie. emails) for those who might need to be contacted to clarify or correct this data in the future.
  • List descriptive keywords that would help others find your data
  • Gather links for related publications, github repositories, or other online presences that would help

Key Ethical Considerations

Make sure bibliographic information reflects correct author and contributor attributions.

Essential Tasks

  • Check that metadata quality is rich, accurate, and complete for any institutional requirements.
  • Facilitate discoverability:
    • Add links to related publications, grants, reports, source data, etc.
    • Provide additional description of files as appropriate for external indexing or other purposes.
    • Add subject terms
  • Ensure keywords are sufficient and representative
  • Record all changes made in your documentation (e.g. README)