Assessing metadata and curation quality: a case study from the development of a third-party curation service at Springer Nature

Abstract

Since 2017, the publisher Springer Nature has provided an optional Research Data Support service to help researchers deposit and curate data that support their peer-reviewed publications. This service builds on a Research Data Helpdesk, which since 2016 has provided support to authors and editors who need advice on the options available for sharing their research data. In this paper we describe a short project which aimed to facilitate an objective assessment of metadata quality, undertaken during the development of a third-party curation service for researchers (Research Data Support). We provide details on the single-blind user-testing which was undertaken, and the results gathered during this experiment. We also briefly describe the curation services which have been developed and introduced following an initial period of testing and piloting. This paper will be presented at the International Digital Curation Conference 2019, and has been submitted to the International Journal of Digital curation.