What is meant by documentation and metadata?
What is meant by documentation and metadata?
Answer
If you return to your data in a month, or a year, or several years’ time, will you be able to understand your data and re-use it? Would another research be able to? Documentation and metadata should help with the long term usability of your data.
Metadata is structured information about the data. A repository may ask you, for example, to supply information in dedicated fields about your work (project title, creator) or any other information that would be required to allow a complete understanding of the data and the context within which it was created.
For more information, see
- Documenting
- Advice on documentation and metadata from the University of Cambridge
- Advice on documentation and metadata from the UK Data Archive