Hands-On Data Publishing with Researchers: Five Experiments with Metadata in Multiple Domains.

The current requirements for open data in the EU are increasing the awareness of researchers with respect to data management and data publication. Metadata is essential in research data management, namely on data discovery and reuse. Current practices tend to either leave metadata definition to researchers, or to assign their creation to curators. The former typically results in ad-hoc descriptors, while the latter follows standards but lacks specificity. In this exploratory study, we adopt a researcher-curator collaborative approach in five data publication cases, involving researchers in data description and discussing the use of both generic and domain-oriented metadata. The study shows that researchers working on familiar datasets can contribute effectively to the definition of metadata models, in addition to the actual metadata creation. The cases also provide preliminary evidence of cross-disciplinary descriptor use. Moreover, the interaction with curators highlights the advantages of data management, making researchers more open to participate in the corresponding tasks.