EAGER: Dryad BRIDGE: Building Repository Interconnections with Dryad Guidance and Extensions

This project will explore methods to increase the quality of data publication in a large multidisciplinary repository (Dryad) using techniques that can be broadly deployed in many scientific communities. The project will be undertaken by a metadata consulting firm in collaboration with Stanford University, and the Dryad repository. The quality of metadata associated with datasets is fundamental to the success of open science.

Datasets with poor quality metadata are far less likely to be discovered or usefully described for open science purposes of reproducibility of results and generation of new research findings. Scalable methods for improving the quality of metadata for datasets will be extremely advantageous for open science purposes broadly.

The project has three broad technical goals, as follows. First, the project team will work with Dryad sub-disciplinary communities in Earth and Earth Sciences to develop enhanced metadata templates that better characterize datasets beyond the minimally required metadata fields. Second, the project team will assess and enhance metadata in Dryad by developing connectivity metadata metrics and baselines in consultation with Dryad user groups, integrating missing funder metadata into records, and attempting to apply the enhanced metadata templates to records.

Third, the project team will apply both the enhanced metadata templates and enhanced metadata records produced to approximately 40K records in Dryad to identify potential connections to other repositories and service providers (especially with the EarthCube Council of Data Facilities repositories) and interlinkages with articles and funders to further enhance the quality of the metadata in Dryad as a proof of concept.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.