Fiona Counsell Taylor & FrancisHow do we make what some might think to be boring metadata more appealing? Metadata has a PR problem and it’s time to wrap it in pastry and bake it for 40-45 minutes until golden brown. How can we motivate organizations and businesses in scholarly communications to improve their metadata? How do we support individuals to make the case for metadata solutions to decision makers in their organizations? How might we elevate the importance of metadata to motivate publishers, service providers, and libraries to make the sometimes costly infrastructure changes to enhance the completeness, connectedness, openness and reusability of metadata? ‘Incentives for Improving Metadata’ is one of Metadata 2020’s six projects, and has been described as the ‘vision’ project of the collaboration. Project participants are working to create resources to help organizations across scholarly communications understand the importance of metadata, including helping them identify tangible and appealing operational benefits for infrastructure changes. In this session Fiona will present the resources created to date and engage attendees to consider what additional resources may be helpful in their respective communities.

2. April, 2019
Metadata En Croûte
Making metadata appetizing
to decision makers
Fiona Counsell, Taylor & Francis

3. Sushi Dish With Vegetable by
Pixabay CC0 from Pexels

4. Metadata is important!

5. Metadata: Tech or business concern?
...contributing to
delicious dishes of
powerful and effective
business needs
Metadata technology
provides raw
ingredients...
workflows micro-payments compliance reportingbusiness development
Five White Plates With Different Kinds of
Dishes by Pixabay CC0 from Pexels
Spices Avocado and Ingredients on Table by
mali maeder CC0 from Pexels

6. What is Metadata 2020?
A collaboration that advocates research
output metadata that is
to advance scholarly pursuits for the benefit
of society.
RICHER
fuels discoverability &
innovation
CONNECTED
bridges gaps between
systems & communities
REUSABLE / OPEN
eliminates duplication of
effort

7. Community-identified challenges
Metadata entry
takes time, and
must be entered
multiple times
Establishing streamlined,
efficient workflows for metadata
is challenging - siloed expertise
& unclear prioritization
Low adoption of metadata
efforts creates a tension
between quantity & quality
of metadata
RESEARCHERS
PUBLISHERS
REPOSITORIES
Metadata culture is often
focused on technical details
rather than the bigger
system-level picture
LIBRARIANS
Interoperability is
challenging:
inconsistent metadata
vocabulary and
community standards
SERVICE PROVIDERS

8. ● Communities have similar problems and similar
solutions available if they collaborate
● Efforts have been made to address challenges within
each community, but few efforts have been truly cross-
community
● We hope to increase effectiveness and efficiency and
avoid duplication of work

9. Projects
● Having identified core concerns for multiple communities, we
formed 6 closely related projects in March 2018
● The projects were designed to address the concerns of the
community groups
● Projects include participants from different communities

10. Components of a great dish
Metadata Mapping and Evaluation
● Metadata recommendations & element mappings
● Metadata evaluation & guidance
PLANNINGPREPARINGPRESENTATION
Best Practice, Principles, and Definitions for
Metadata
● Defining the terms we use about metadata
● Best practices & principles
Researcher Communications & Incentives for
Improving Metadata
● Researcher communications
● Incentives for improving metadata quality
Photo by Stokpic from Pexels
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels

11. Metadata Mapping and Evaluation

12. Metadata Recommendations & Element Mappings
Group Lead: Jim Swainston, Emerald Group Publishing
Purpose: To converge communities and publishers towards a
shared set of recommended metadata concepts with related
mappings between those recommended concepts and elements in
important dialects.
Outputs
● Schema index
● Schema mapping
● Flow diagram

13. Metadata Evaluation and Guidance
Group Lead: Ted Habermann, Metadata Game Changers
Purpose: To identify and compare existing metadata evaluation
tools and mechanisms for connecting the results of those
evaluations to clear, cross-community guidance.
Outputs
● Index of evaluation tools
● Element-level best practice notes
● Best practices index

14. Best Practice, Principles & Definitions

15. Defining the Terms We Use About Metadata
Group Lead: Scott Plutchak, University of Alabama at
Birmingham (retired)
Purpose: In order to communicate effectively about anything, a
common language must be acknowledged, tacitly or purposefully.
In the metadata space, there is not agreement on what words like
property, term, concept, schema, title refer to. This project will
develop a glossary of words associated with metadata, both for
core concepts and disciplinary areas.
Outputs
● Global metadata glossary

16. Shared Best Practices and Principles
Group Leads: Howard Ratner, CHORUS; and Jennifer Kemp,
Crossref
Purpose: To build a set of high level best practices for using
metadata across the scholarly communication cycle, in order to
facilitate interoperability and easier exchange of information and
data across the stakeholders in the process.
Outputs
● Links to best practices & guidelines
● Metadata principles
● Metadata practices / sentiments (principles preamble)

17. Researcher Communications & Incentives

18. Researcher Communications
Group Lead: Alice Meadows, ORCID; Michelle Urberg,
ProQuest
Purpose: Exploring ways to align efforts between communities
who aim to increase the impact and consistency of
communication with researchers about metadata.
Outputs
● Literature Review
● Survey Results

19. Incentives for Improving Metadata Quality
Group Lead: Fiona Counsell, Taylor & Francis
Purpose: To highlight downstream applications and value of
metadata for all parts of the community, telling real stories as
evidence of how better metadata will meet their goals.
Outputs
● Metadata personas
● Big benefits

20. The Metadata2020 Incentives Pyramid
Advancing
Research
Impact Innovation
Discoverability Accessibility
Reducing
Friction Integrity & Trust

21. Metadata Big Benefits
Discoverability
● Discoverability of research maximises dissemination to create impact
● High-quality metadata = topic content discovery
● Metadata links diverse content & outputs > Connections! Discoveries!
Accessibility
● High-quality metadata provides accessibility to research results
● high quality metadata utilising standards enables
○ Curation and custodianship
○ Long-term preservation
○ Machine & human readability

22. Metadata Big Benefits
Reducing Friction
● Metadata standards enable system interoperability
● Interoperability enables efficiency in people and processes
● Greater efficiency leads to higher productivity
● Standards and interoperable systems reduce administrative burden
Integrity & Trust
● Communities will preserve, protect and enhance trust in research
● Research transparency is key to building credibility and integrity
● Provenance metadata > resources people involved; chain of custody
● Metadata enables reproducibility of research data

23. Metadata Big Benefits
Impact
● Communities/ organisation measure impact differently
● All want to position themselves to stay ahead of technology,
opportunities & competitors
● Investment = benefits + increased leadership/ service reputation
Innovation
● Benefits lead to greater innovation
● New services and business models for existing & start-up orgs
● Catalyst for innovation within research itself
○ New research result trends and connections
○ Increased trust and trust indicators across scientific communities
○ Research method innovation via large scale text and data mining

24. Metadata Principles
For metadata to support the community, it should be
COMPATIBLE: a guide to content for machines and people
So, metadata must be open, interoperable, parsable, machine
actionable, human readable as possible.
COMPLETE: reflect the content, components and relationships as
published
So, metadata must be as complete and comprehensive as possible.
CREDIBLE: enable content discoverability and longevity
So, metadata must be of clear provenance, trustworthy and accurate.
CURATED: reflect updates and new elements
So, metadata must be maintained over time.

25. Personas
● Creators
Those who provide descriptive information (metadata) about research
and scholarly outputs
● Curators
Those who classify, normalize and standardize this descriptive
information to increase its value as a resource
● Custodians
Those who store and maintain this descriptive information and make it
available for Consumers
● Consumers
Those who knowingly or unknowingly use the descriptive information to
find, discover, connect and cite research and scholarly outputs

26. Adopt a persona
● What innovations do you wish were available for this
role?
● What impact do you think would come from
better/easier fulfilment of this role?
● What incentives would make it more desirable to
perform this role?
Creators | Curators | Custodians | Consumers
Record your thoughts
http://bit.ly/M2020_UKSGPresentationNOTES

27. How well served are you?
Importance
How important is the
attribute?
Least
Most
Well served?
How well do current tools
and process serve you?
Not at all Very
Attribute 1 3 5 1 3 5
Metadata Credibility/Accuracy - how correct and
understandable the information I provide/use is
◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯
Metadata Completeness - how complete the
information is can be compared to the available fields
◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯
Metadata Compatibility - how compatible the
information I provide/use is to metadata found about
other outputs, including ones submitted by others
◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯
Metadata Curation/Maintainability - how the
metadata that I provide/use is maintained over time
◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯
Record your thoughts
http://bit.ly/M2020_UKSGPresentationNOTES

28. Can you help?
● Over 140 individuals are involved in Metadata 2020
● Contribute to Metadata 2020 projects!
Email info@metadata2020.org for details
● Help promote our efforts to the wider community through
your organizations, and social media
● Respond the the survey, circulate the survey to your
colleagues/researchers
● Find us on @Metadata2020 Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
and at metadata2020.org

29. Metadata2020.org
@metadata2020
info@metadata2020.org
@fionacounsell
fiona.counsell@tandf.co.uk
Thank you!

30. Questions