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Data-Intensive Research: Data Documentation

This guide covers data services and resources available to the WCMC community.

Intro to Metadata

Metadata: structured information that helps others find, understand, and use data. 

Metadata should tell the data user how to read the data, the context in which it was gathered, relevant protocols and methods used, along with the data's structure, file format, and any other data sources involved. Confidentiality, access and use conditions should also be documented.

  • Three types of metadata:
    • Descriptive- Describes an object (dataset) to enable discovery and identification (e.g. the object's title, creator, keywords, DOI)
    • Structural- Indicates how objects are put together (e.g. A description of how different files are used within a research workflow)
    • Administrative- Provides information regarding how to manage the object, such as how it was created and stored, and intellectual property rights. There are two types of administrative metadata:
      • Rights Management Metadata- Deals with intellectual property
      • Preservation Metadata- Pertains to archival or preservation needs

(NISO, 2004)

Tools & Resources

Cornell Research Data Management Services Group Resources on Metadata and Data Description from RDMSG

 

Understanding Metadata by the National Information Standards Organization

 

BioSharing works to map the landscape of community developed standards in the life sciences, broadly covering biological, natural and biomedical sciences. BioSharing's goal is to ensure standards are informative and discoverable.

 

NIH Common Data Elements NIH portal that contains data elements common to many data sets across differing studies.  CDEs support the improvement of data quality and  data sharing. View collections of CDEs by specific project, or subject area.

 

NIH: Data Standards and Common Data Elements Resource Guide Resource guide document which provides sample tools and information for identifying and using certain data standards and common data elements in NIH programs

 

Digital Curation Center's List of Disciplinary Metadata Standards Information about disciplinary metadata standards. Includes profiles, tools to implement the standards, and examples of data repositories currently using them.

 

Examples including standards, tools, and use cases:

-List of Biology metadata standards 
-List of Earth Sciences metadata standards 
-List of Physical Sciences metadata standards 

 

Ontology Lookup Service Provides a web service interface to query multiple ontologies from a single location with a unified output format. The OLS can integrate any ontology available in the Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) format.

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