Homogenization of metadata to simplify the RDM landscape
The annotation of data with metadata is essential for well-maintained research data according to FAIR principles. Metadata is particularly important for describing how your data was generated. To get an idea of what metadata is essential for a specific type of data, metadata checklists from data repositories as well as the minimal information standards developed by different scientific communities can be considered. However, for individual researchers, the number of different standards and checklists can easily become unmanageable.
Therefore, we have made it our mission to keep track of the key metadata relevant for data publication by including it in templates that can be integrated into ARCs easily, enabling the individual researcher to comfortably use the prefabricated construct.
For using these metadata templates as well as easily creating and filling annotation tables with ontology terms, we developed the tool Swate (Swate workflow annotation tool for Excel). Swate contains templates that represent the specific metadata requirements of different data repositories and minimum information standards as well as general templates for different lab assays. Swate is integrated into ARCitect and will automatically be used when adding metadata to your studies and assays from within ARCitect, but it can also be used as a standalone tool in Excel and in your browser.