Building an International Consensus on Multi-Disciplinary Metadata Standards: A CODATA Case History in Nanotechnology

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2019-012

Keywords:

Metadata standards, data standards, international scientific cooperation, scientific data, nanomaterials, nanoinformatics

Abstract

Science today is rapidly becoming both multi-disciplinary and data-driven. These two trends pose new challenges to the capture, management, sharing, and dissemination of research data. Multi-disciplinary science means diverse data generation communities and equally diverse user groups. Data-driven means that sharing data among different communities is more important than ever because of the growth of modeling and knowledge discovery. Nanotechnology is a prime example, involving chemistry, physics, materials science, toxicology, environmental science, and many other disciplines. During the past few years, CODATA has created an international, multi-disciplinary Working Group that has developed a number of critically important metadata standards to facilitate sharing nanomaterials data. In this paper, we discuss the challenges faced in starting and executing this work, as well as the approaches taken to make progress on producing internationally accepted metadata standards. Many of these approaches are directly applicable to other multi-disciplinary subjects.

Author Biographies

John Rumble, R&R Data Services, Gaithersburg, MD

Dr. John Rumble, Jr. was Chair of the CODATA Working Group on Nanomaterials. He was also President of CODATA from 1998 to 2002.

John Broome, John Broome, Ottawa

John Broome is Treasurer of CODATA.

Simon Hodson, CODATA, Paris

Dr. Simon Hodson is Executive Director of CODATA.

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Published

2019-04-09

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Section

Research Papers