Documentation, Metadata, and Access & Sharing

  • Documentation explains how data were created or digitised, what data mean, what their content and structure are and any data manipulations that may have taken place.
  • Examples  of  data  documentation  include:
    • laboratory notebooks & experimental protocols
    • questionnaires, codebooks, data dictionaries
    • software syntax and output files
    • database schema
    • methodology reports
  • Metadata is a form of documentation that uses terms or statements to describe data.
  • Metadata can contain fields that provide standardized structured information. This may include:
    • the purpose
    • origin
    • time references
    • geographic location
    • creator
    • organization
    • technical information
    • access conditions
    • terms of use of a data collection
  • A number of other fields can be added depending on the nature of the data based on your needs.
  • Many metadata standards exist across a broad range of disciplines and applications.
  • Sharing data makes your data accessible to others, which can be used and re-used for future scientific and educational purposes.