Moving from Compliance to Reproducibility: Metadata for Supplementary Research Collections

<p>The research community has begun making supplementary materials (such as research data and software code) more open and accessible in recent years. Journals have started to require that authors submit their supplementary materials along with their papers, and many authors make these items available for compliance purposes with little thought given to how those materials might be reused or what metadata might be needed to facilitate such reuse. However, data reuse has continued to become more prominent, and the growing popularity of newer research methodologies like systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and verification studies reflect that. As a result, more authors are starting to voluntarily make their data available, and researchers expect to be able to find and build upon existing datasets. Before, supplementary materials often took on the metadata of the papers they accompanied. Now they must stand on their own with their own descriptions to facilitate reuse. Data repositories and initiatives have started to spring up and provide some guidance (e.g., DDI). However, a pervasive standard has not fully emerged. This presentation will describe how metadata for traditional research publications differs from metadata for supplementary materials that is intended for primary discovery and reuse.