C2Metadata project: Automated Capture and Description of Data Transformations

Abstract

This presentation, given at the European Data Documentation Initiative User Conference (EDDI) 2017 on December 6, 2017 in Lausanne, Switzerland, describes the C2Metadata project (http://c2metadata.org/), which is developing new tools that will work with common statistical packages (SPSS®, SAS®, Stata®, R) to automate the capture of metadata at the granularity of individual data transformations. Software-independent data transformation descriptions will be added to metadata in two internationally accepted standards, the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Ecological Metadata Language (EML). These tools will create efficiencies and reduce the costs of data collection, preparation, and re-use. Our project targets research communities with strong metadata standards and heavy reliance on statistical analysis software (social and behavioral sciences and earth observation sciences), but it is generalizable to other domains, such as biomedical research. (Earlier versions of this presentation were given at the North American Data Documentation Initiative Conference (NADDI) 2017 on April 7, 2017 in Ithaca, New York, and at the International Association for Social Science Information Services and Technology (IASSIST) 2017 conference in Lawrence, Kansas on May 25, 2017. See: http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/136235)