Gustavo Durand
Last week we released DVN version 2.2.5 and are now ready to work on
the enhanced metadata features for the next version, DVN 3.0.
Over the past few days, we've had some meetings here and have come up
with a high level design of how we think it should work and wanted to
run it by the community to see what people thought and make sure that
it should handle your needs. We also have some specific questions to
make sure we're not missing anything.
___
After going back and forth, we think the most straightforward way to
make changes is to allow the network admin to define different "sets"
of Data Collection and Methodology (.e.g. one for Astronomu, one for
BioMed, etc).
Then a dv admin / curator can choose whichever one of those is
appropriate for his/her field when defining a template.
This is different than we were originally thinking, which was allow
new single fields for any of the sections, but we are leaning towards
thinking this will be simpler to the curators. We think that the other
sections have pretty standard fields which should work well across
disciples, so would like to try to those closely tied to the DDI
metadata fields, whereas with Data Collection, you won't just want one
field here or there, but a whole set of them tied more closely with
your discipline.
What does the group think about this? Would this work for your
metadata needs*?
* There are other changes as well, such as allowing multiple data
collection sections per study, or hiding individual fields at the
template level, but this is just to check the high level approach of
defining sets of Data Collection fields.
A few specific questions:
- When we last met, there were some fields that we currently have as
single value for which some in the group wanted multiple values. Can
anyone remind us of which fields these are?
- Could you send a list of what metadata fields you would add if you
had full flexibility? That way we can see if this maps to our
solution. Please specify which, if any, should accept multiple values.
Thanks,
Gustavo
Tim Clark
If I understand the proposal, it seems FAR better to have "modules" or sets of metadata than individual fields.
At the same time I think we need to be doing two other very important things to make this approach work.
1 - Prototyping these per-domain modules in real situations; and
2 - Promoting the modules by making them available to the community with the DVN software.
I have a specific situation I would like to propose to prototype a BioMed metadata module - in collaboration with the editors in chief of PLoS Computational Biology (http://www.ploscompbiol.org/home.action) and Omics (http://www.liebertpub.com/products/product.aspx?pid=43) journals.
If DVN team is interested in discussing and learning more please suggest a couple of slots for a brief concall to hear the details. I have both editors in chief on board if you want to do this.
Best
Tim
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Merce Crosas
Mercè Crosas, PhD
Director of Product Development
IQSS, Harvard University
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