FAIR+R: Making Clinical Data Reliable Through Qualitative Metadata

Abstract

Metadata are often the first access to data repositories for researchers within secondary use. Through automatic metadata generation and metadata harvesting the amount of data about data has been growing ever since. In order to make data not only FAIR but also reliable, the aspect of metadata quality has to be considered. But as earlier assessments of metadata of different repositories showed, metadata quality still lacks behind its capability. Providing an extensive literature review the authors conclude nine measures to assess metadata in relation to clinical care repositories, such as Medical Data Integration Centers (MeDICs). Proceeding from these measures the authors propose an addition of the FAIR Guiding Principles by adding a fifth block for Reliability including three principles, that resulted from the measures presented. The results form the basis for the future work of an assessment of metadata, that is stored in a MeDIC.