Perspectives on Metadata Quality and Completeness Recording

This interview with Todd Carpenter and Patricia Payton, Senior Manager, Provider Relations, ProQuest (part of Clarivate), served as the closing segment of the NISO Hot Topic Virtual Conference "Metadata and Discovery: Quality is Key," held in May 2023. Payton talked about the biggest challenges facing the metadata ecosystem today, and the growing need for consistency across the industry.

The second half of this two-part NISO Roundtable allows participants to expand the discussion into the expanding realm of non-traditional outputs, and what support for such output may demand of different stakeholders in the scholarly ecosystem. Video, audio, and data visualization are already increasingly common output formats. Specific disciplines, such as the arts, require support for images, performances, and more. What does this all mean for our research infrastructure? For editorial or content management systems? For discovery tools? For content platforms? System requirements are becoming increasingly more complex — and also exciting — as content and system providers have to think outside the box to meet their users’ needs. Confirmed speakers include Wind Cowles, PhD, Director, Research Data and Open Scholarship, Princeton University Library; Salwa Ismail, Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology, University of California - Berkeley; Carl Stahmer, Executive Director, DataLab, Data Science and Informatics, University of California -Davis; and Bonnie J. Russell, Project Manager for MESH Research, Humanities Commons, and Digital Specialist for HuMetricsHSS, Michigan State University.

Open research — making the entire research process more transparent, and results more accessible, in the interest of reproducibility and verification — continues to gain momentum globally. This event looked at the current state of open research around the world, examining needs across different communities, and identifying next steps that might be useful in helping to meet those needs. The agenda covered a broad range of topics, including open peer review and data-sharing, reproducibility, and metrics for open access outputs, as well as the current and future role of publication in preserving the scholarly record. Confirmed Speakers: Toby Green, Co-founder, Coherent Digital; Glenn Hampson, Program Director, Open Scholarship Initiative; Gabriela Mejias, Engagement Manager, Global Consortia, ORCID; Alison Mudditt, CEO, PLOS; Jason Priem, Co-Founder, OurResearch.org; and Jennifer Regala, Director of Publications/Executive Editor, American Urological Association. 

Projects that are built on top of multiple open data sets are beginning to be more visible to the public. This virtual conference will serve as an expansive tour of a variety of open data projects from academia, local government, and other sectors. Looking for inspiration, useful examples or just the opportunity to learn what’s possible? This virtual event will spotlight novel approaches as well as practical activities.

The digital information environment means that users engage with content and services in ways that the assessment community is still trying to identify and understand. New and nuanced metrics can help tell a deeper story of impact for libraries. In this session, we will examine the complex issue of data privacy and ethics in the context of library assessment, with case studies drawn from altmetrics, learning analytics, community-based assessment, ebooks, and OER. Questions that will frame our discussion include: What privacy concerns does following user data in that context raise for those responsible for assessment? What are the logistics of gathering that data? What are we collecting, and for what purpose?