Data Service Infrastructure for the Social Sciences and Humanities Deliverable Report: Part A: Metadata Quality Improvement

The aim of this task was to analyse and compare the different metadata strategies of CLARIN, DARIAH and CESSDA, and to identify possibilities of cross-fertilization to take profit from each other solutions where possible. To have a better understanding in which stages of the research lifecycle metadata comes to the fore, we looked at several research data lifecycles and business process models. However the current research data lifecycle models have the ‘static’ data object as basis, whereas metadata design, redesign, creation and management can continue to be ‘live’ issues within the research lifecycle. We therefore developed a metadata lifecycle based closely on familiar lifecycle models but extended to support the more dynamic metadata issues.  To describe the metadata management of the different infrastructures we took a double approach. We looked on a more general level and outlined the policies and strategies regarding metadata of the three infrastructures. We evaluated these strategies on metadata quality issues with the Bruce and Hillmann criteria. On the other hand we looked with more detail how the work on metadata management is done by the individual data repositories.  The infrastructures of CESSDA, CLARIN and DARIAH differ in visions, strategies and initiatives regarding metadata issues; similarly there is a difference in metadata management among the various repositories. Despite these differences, cross fertilisation by coordination on common lists of metadata elements, sharing of knowledge, and linking resources would leverage the overall metadata quality. Evaluation of the prototype of the joint CLARIN, DARIAH and CESSDA metadata portal endorses the opinion that more coordination is needed.  Metadata quality must be discussed in relation to the activities for which they are used. We suggest that the infrastructures DARIAH and CLARIN prioritise future collaboration about standardisation efforts, which have already been initialised in dialogue between the CLARIN Standards Committee and the DARIAH representatives. Similar initiatives could be established with CESSDA.