12 June 2019

Today we continue our communication of Metadata 2020 outputs as outlined in an earlier post. Since 2018, our work has been primarily divided into six project groups; as co-chairs of the Researcher Communications project, we are happy to share an update on our work.

This project group is been charged with increasing our understanding of the attitudes and values that individuals have about metadata in scholarly outputs in order to help inform how we talk about metadata to this audience. So today we are launching a survey to gather feedback about metadata knowledge, attitudes, and usage in scholarly communications. It is designed to gather input from all those who create, care for, curate and consume metadata. We want to hear from librarians, publishers and repositories, as well as researchers themselves.

We enthusiastically invite you to participate in this voluntary survey, which will take about 15 minutes to complete. It is open to anyone 18 years old or over (no compensation for participants), and will be open though June 21! We will summarize our findings and share them with the community later this year.

TAKE THE METADATA 2020 SURVEY

WHAT IS METADATA?                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Metadata is “data about data” and is often, but not always, a structured or standardized way to describe a research object. Research objects include, but are not limited to articles, book chapters, books, datasets, images, audio/video recordings, code, or other archival materials.

WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO LEARN

The purpose of this study is to understand the familiarity and usage of metadata by those who use metadata in the process of preparing, publishing, cataloging, or sharing research papers, media and other associated objects in scholarly communications.

ABOUT THIS SURVEY

This survey asks multiple choice and ranking questions, with a few short answer options. We estimate that this will take about 15 minutes to complete. At the end of the survey, you will have the option to provide your contact information (phone and email) to participate in a one-time phone call at a later date where the researcher may ask for clarification or further detail about your responses. This optional call will be scheduled at your convenience and will also take about 15 minutes. You do not need to provide any contact information to participate in the online survey.

Participation is voluntary. The survey is being used for research purposes only and your name and contact information (if you decide to provide it) will not be given to anyone. Your responses will be kept confidential.

WHO IS CONDUCTING THIS SURVEY?

Metadata 2020 is a collaboration that advocates richer, connected, and reusable, open metadata for all research outputs, which will advance scholarly pursuits for the benefit of society. Projects, including this survey and its subsequent analysis, are designed and conducted by volunteer community contributors. Crossref has contributed use of this survey tool.

About the authors

Alice Meadows and Michelle Urberg are co-chairs of Metadata 2020 Project 1: Researcher Communications. Metadata 2020 is a collaboration that advocates richer, connected, and reusable, open metadata for all research outputs, and which will advance scholarly pursuits for the benefit of society.

Source: MetaData2020.org http://www.metadata2020.org/blog/2019-06-03-how-do-you-metadata/

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