
Documentation and metadata
Some examples of data documentation:
• Laboratory notebooks and experimental protocols
• Questionnaires, codebooks, data dictionaries
• Software syntax and output files
• Information about equipment settings and instrument calibration
• Database schema
• Methodology reports
• Provenance information about sources of derived data
Add detailed descriptions for collections or files, for example, what is in a file, where did it come from, how could it be retrieved if needed, any existing problems and so on.
Metadata
• What contextual details are needed to make the data you capture or collect meaningful?
• How will you create or capture these metadata?
• What form will the metadata take?
• To what extent will metadata creation be automated?
• Which metadata standards will you use?