Do More

Do More

educate yourself about metadata

What does richer metadata look like and how can we effect it? Explore articles, scholarly papers, presentations. and other resources to better understand specific challenges, complexities, and opportunities in affecting change in metadata content, practices, and processes.

What To Do

Resources

This section highlights just a few papers and resources that may be of interest. This is in no way a complete list. We highly recommend the following two resources for deeper explorations about the topic of metadata:

Metadata Literature Review

A peer-reviewed academic literature review published in 2019 and supported by Metadata 20/20. The purpose of this literature review is to identify the challenges, opportunities, and gaps in knowledge with regard to the use of metadata in scholarly communications. This paper compiles and interprets literature in sections based on the professional groups, or stakeholders, within scholarly communications metadata: researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, service providers, and data curators. It then ends with a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the metadata supply chain which presents the network of relationships and interdependencies between stakeholders. This paper seeks to lay the groundwork for new approaches to present problems in scholarly communications metadata.

  • Gregg WJ, Erdmann C, Paglione LAD, Schneider J, Dean C (2019) A literature review of scholarly communications metadata. Research Ideas and Outcomes 5: e38698. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.5.e38698

ScienceOpen Collection of Metadata Resources

This significant collection is community-curated and constantly evolving set of resources on the topic of the use of metadata in scholarly communications. Information on how to add to this collection can be found on the ScienceOpen page.

Other Resources

Why Metadata
  • Digital Science White Paper: A New ‘Research Data Mechanics’

    Research metadata forms the information network that connects researchers, research institutions, funders, publishers, and research service providers together. How well information flows across this community has direct implications on how well research activity can be supported, and fundamentally how efficiently we can move research forward. This whitepaper recasts how we think about metadata - not as a series of static records, but as objects that move between systems and organizations.

  • Neilsen Book US/UK Study: The Importance of Metadata for Discoverability and Sales

    Results of a Nielsen Book analysis that illustrates the strong link between the completeness of the appropriate metadata and the resultant sales.

Training Resources
  • Fairdata Training Resources on Data Management

    These general resources about research resource preservation provide an overview of how to be effective when preparing your materials for long-term preservation with an eye toward FAIR principles - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. The training videos and checklists are available in Finnish and English, and are targeted toward those who perform research artifact activities only occasionally, for example, when submitting a paper or archiving a dataset.

Uses: Citation
  • Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles

    Data citation, like the citation of other evidence and sources, is good research practice and is part of the scholarly ecosystem supporting data reuse. This declaration provides a set of guiding principles for citing data.

 

OTHER THINGS YOU CAN DO...

Sign the pledge!
Spread the word about metadata
Join a working group
negotiate metadata in contracts
contribute a use case
educate yourself about metadata