Metadata for your data

The term 'metadata' is all around us, but what does it actually mean and how to deal with them in daily work?

What Are Metadata?

Metadata are simply data about your data. They tell everyone (including yourself) what your dataset is, who produced it, when and for which project. Think of them as hashtags with keywords for your data:

What would you type into a search engine to find your data?

When uploading files to a repository or similar, you will be asked to give metadata. At best, you also have them on an extra file in your data folders on your computer, right from the moment you save them. That helps you keep your data tidy and find the right files for reuse or publication. It also gives yourself info about the data when you find them again on your hard drive in a few years after your project.

Here are some ideas what info to include in your metadata:

General bibliographic info:

  • author
  • affiliation
  • title of publication
  • related other publications and data sets

To reconstruct context:

  • project name and number
  • funder
  • experiment

For further analysis/reuse:

  • abbreviations
  • codes
  • units
  • protocols
  • file types

Key descriptions of experiment:

  • method
  • instruments/hardware
  • software
  • (pre-)processings performed

The more the better!

If you have any questions or want to know more, your Research Data Managers are happy to help!