Metadata

Metadata is information about data, i.e. the description of a data set including all necessary for the understanding of the data: who, what, when, where and how were the data produced. The metadata fields desribe the factual data in the context of sampling and measurements and also make it citable. The size/composition of a data set (and consequently the amount of required metadata) depends on the definition of its granularity.

The following fields are composed as the metadata description which is given as the header of each data set (mandatory fields in bold):


 * Event with geographical position (for georeferenced data), elevation, area, comment, devices used
 * Expedition/cruise/campaign/leg information (label, ship, station, chief scientist, area)
 * PI (principle investigator/originator) for each data series (full name with email, defined in staff table)
 * Author(s) of data set (if in addition to PI)
 * Data set title (phrasing should be similar to the title of a publication)
 * Reference(s) (if data are supplementary to a publication or if data are a compilation from various sources) (with URI)
 * Method for each data series (with URI or description as pdf)
 * Comment for each data series
 * Comment/description related to the data set (further details); as free text or as pdf-file
 * Abstract (in case data are a supplement or the data set is a data publication)
 * Keyword(s)
 * Project full name and acronym
 * Cross-references to other versions (URI)

!> Pangaea should not be used for the management of metadata solely, e.g. as reference database or just listing campaigns/events of a project. In principle metadata should be archived only, if the related factual data are also imported, following the principle:
 * No metadata without data!
 * No data without metadata!