Provide capabilities for tagging and annotation of your data by the community

People have different perspectives on what data means to them, and how it can be used and interpreted in different contexts. Data users ranging from community participants to researchers in different domains can provide unique and valuable insights into data through the use of annotation and tagging. The community-generated notes and tags should be discoverable through the data search engine to enhance discovery and use.

When providing capabilities for community tagging and annotations, you should consider the following:

• Differentiate between the metadata developed by the creator and additional tags or annotations to the data or metadata
• Allow for community tags and annotations to be indexed as part of the terms or text that is indexed in a search
• Provide easy-to-understand examples of the kinds of tagging or annotation that will promote the discovery of your data
• Consider whether or not a review process for community tagging is needed
• Consider whether controlled vocabularies will be used for tags
• Provide clear guidelines for the addition of tags and construction of annotations
• Make tags accessible via an application programming interface (API)

Description Rationale

Others’ perceptions and views of your dataset might differ; by providing the ability for the community to annotate your data, the data are more likely to be discovered by a broad range of potential users.

Examples

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
http://www.myexperiment.org/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.plosbiology.org/static/ratingGuidelines.action
http://www.youtube.com/

Cite this best practice:

Beth Sandore, Cindy Parr, DataONE  (September 01, 2011) "Best Practice: Provide capabilities for tagging and annotation of your data by the community". Accessed through the Data Management Skillbuilding Hub at https://dataoneorg.github.io/Education/bestpractices/provide-capabilities-for on Mar 01, 2024