Understanding Metadata Functional Requirements in Genome Curation Work

摘要

The proliferation of genomic data and their widespread datareuse pose new challenges to effectively manage and curategenomic data. This study contributes towards betterunderstanding of 156 genomics scientists’ perception andpriorities for metadata functional requirements in genomecuration work. Our study was guided by previouslyidentified twenty two metadata functional requirements(Willis, Greenberg, & White, 2012), and intended to definea context-sensitive model of groupings for metadata goalsin genome curation. Analysis of the results revealed thatgenomics scientists recognize specific sets of metadatafunctional requirements in the genome-curation context.These metadata goals were reduced to six factor constructs.The rankings of these constructs in decreasing order arePortability, Reusability, Manipulability, Sufficiency,Interoperability, and Modularity. The findings indicatedthat genomics scientists need both domain independent anddependent metadata functional requirements that areprimarily related to data comparison, integration, and reuseacross platforms and databases. The constructs defined bythis study advance the understanding of metadatarequirements and their relationships. In addition, theresulting metadata requirement model can serve as avaluable resource to genome scientists, data curators andadministrators for designing metadata schemes anddeveloping data-curation policies.