Applied Metadata – The Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration HMC

Metadata, i.e. 'data about data', are fundamental for making research data findable, usable and understandable by researchers and all interested parties now and in the future. Moreover, with the advent of new, data-driven technologies and instrumentation leading to constantly increasing data volumes, and scientific research becoming increasingly interdisciplinary, research data has to be inseparably linked to standardized, machine readable and complete metadata in order to foster data reuse and reproducibility of research results, e.g. by provenance metadata. Only by supporting standards and tools for metadata handling, interoperability with national and international research data infrastructures can be ensured.

The mission of the Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC, https://helmholtz-metadaten.de/en) is to facilitate the discovery, access, machine readability, and reuse of research data of the Helmholtz Association. Concepts and services are developed and established, allowing the enrichment of research data with standardized metadata in the various phases of their creation. The aim of HMC is to co-ordinate these services with the national and international scientific community in order to establish widely accepted practices in the handling of research data.

In this presentation we will introduce to the current HMC activities and outcome: working groups, recommendations on specific metadata elements (e.g. different persistent identifiers), and standards for sharing metadata and tools to do so. Both activities, our discussion and jointly agreed recommendations take place on a "Community Platform" website that is currently being developed.