The Virtual Notebook: a flexible approach to improving research metadata

A major challenge for all research institutions is the long term curation of digital research data. This challenge is complex in nature, covering not only the collection and storage of multiple data formats, but also the creation of relevant (and sufficient) metadata. A key aspect of this challenge is that the creation of dataset metadata can be an afterthought, prepared by an investigator who is focused on new research activities, in order to meet site dataset publication commitments.

The CAP Information Manager and the Informatics team at the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University are focused on developing a new knowledge management system, referred to as a “virtual notebook”, which will aid researchers in managing project related data and help them prepare their data for long-term curation and publication.

This system will address a root cause of poor metadata quality i.e. the temporal disconnect between data creation and metadata preparation. This system will encourage the incremental development of all information associated with a research project, including the creation of project abstracts, methods, protocols and dataset metadata. Programming interfaces will support dataset ingestion by the LTER Network Information System as well as other data repositories.