Starter Guide - Metadata Exchange
- Charlotte Reynolds
This document provides a simple starter guide to new users of the Metadata Exchange, covering the most common functions and workflows.
The guide will cover:
First Steps
To get started, enter your email address and password and click Login.
2. If you have forgotten your password, click on Reset Password and enter your email address to receive a link to reset it.
3. If you have not been provided with an account, please contact your organisational administrator to set this up.
Onboarding a New Dataset
To view an interactive version of this tutorial, click here.
Once you have logged into the Metadata Exchange, the first page you will be presented with is the ONBOARDING PORTAL, which is shown below.
2. The ONBOARDING PORTAL displays a list of all your datasets, as well as their publication and completion statuses. To begin with your organisation may not have any datasets uploaded.
3. If that is the case, your first task will be to onboard your first dataset. To begin, click on the red Onboard New Metadata + button, located in the top right hand corner.
4. The Onboarding Wizard will guide you through the process of filling out the metadata fields for each of the 8 metadata sections (Summary, Documentation, Coverage, Provenance, Accessibility, Enrichment & Linkage, Observations and Structural Metadata).
5. To view completion guidance for each metadata field, click on the icon to the right of each field.
Note: There are five mandatory fields in the Summary section, marked with an asterisk. These must be filled out before moving onto the next metadata section or saving the dataset.
6. Once you have completed these five mandatory fields in the Summary section you can navigate through the metadata sections by clicking Continue at the bottom of the page or by selecting the metadata section from the top bar.
Or click on Save Changes to save your progress and come back to the dataset at a later date.
7. For detailed instructions and complete guidance for descriptive (Section 1-7) and technical (Section 8) metadata, please see here: Schema Guidance
8. When you have completed your session, click on Progress Overview to view a summary of the progress you have made.
9. The Progress Overview page gives you a full rundown of your dataset:
The completion status of metadata fields (completed fields are green, while incomplete fields are red)
Last Updated Time
Publication Status (DRAFT / LIVE / historical )
Privacy Status (Public or Private)
Managing Your Dataset
Once you have onboarded your first dataset, there are further options for managing it on the Progress Overview Page:
Advanced View
Submit for Review
1. Advanced View
The Advanced View allows you to manage the structural metadata of your dataset in more detail. However this advanced functionality is only available to certain users who have been granted access to this area of the system.
Please contact your organisation administrator if you believe you should have access to the Advanced View.
2. Publishing Your Dataset
Once you are happy with your dataset and feel it is ready to be released to the public BROWSER, click on Submit For Review.
2. This will create a request in our internal Service Desk to review your dataset.
3. A reviewer will examine your dataset and notify you if they have identified any issues with your dataset.
4. If no issues are identified, your dataset will be uploaded to the BROWSER and you will receive an email notification with a link to your live dataset. Your dataset is now publicly listed so researchers will be able to discover and request access to your dataset. Its publication status on the Progress Overview page will also change to LIVE.
Creating a New Version of a Dataset
To make changes to a published dataset, you will need to create a new version of your dataset by clicking on Create New Version on the Progress Overview Page.
2. Click Confirm Create New Version.
3. The following message will be displayed.
4. Once a new version of your dataset has been created, you are free to edit the metadata as you require.
5. When you are ready to upload your dataset once more, simply click on Submit For Review again to start the process.
Finding Data with the Browser
To begin, navigate to the Browser using the sidebar:
2. The Browser is public facing data browser that allows researchers to discover and request access to datasets.
3. There are a number of different filters available to narrow down your search for data:
Filter by Publisher to examine the data held by selected organisations.
Filter by Data Use Limitation to only view datasets with permissions that fit your use case.
Filter by additional Data Use Requirements to ensure you are viewing data that fits your use cases.
Filter by Keywords to only view datasets that relate to a certain topic(s).
Filter by Physical Sample Availability to select datasets with specific physical samples associated with them (e.g. WHOLE BLOOD, URINE).
Finally, you can filter by Geographic Coverage to view datasets that cover specific regions or countries.
10. You can also search the datasets using keywords. Click on the search bar, enter a search term and press enter.
11. Click on a dataset to learn more about it.
12. Here you can view the full descriptive and structural metadata for the dataset by clicking on the section names.
Summary: the first section includes a short abstract and contact details for the publisher.
Documentation includes a rich text description of the dataset or links to media such as documents, images, presentations, videos or links to data dictionaries, profiles or dashboards.
Coverage includes attributes for geographical and cohort details etc. to enable you to make decisions about the relevance of the underlying data.
Provenance information allows you to understand data within the context of its origins and can be an indicator of quality, authenticity and timeliness.
Accessibility information allows you to understand access, usage, limitations, formats, standards and linkage or interoperability with toolsets.
Enrichment and Linkage includes information about related datasets that may have previously been linked, as well as indicating if there is the opportunity to link to other datasets in the future.
Observations: this section holds a series of observations about a dataset, such as number of persons, events or findings.
13. To browser the structural metadata, click on “Structural Metadata” on the far left.
14. A side panel will be displayed with the list of data classes in the dataset. Click on one to explore the data elements within.
15. The selected data class will now be displayed in the main panel. In this panel you can see the data class title, description and a list of data elements contained with the class.
16. Click on a data element to learn more.
17. A pop-up window will display the data element name and description and data type, if applicable. Click on the Metadata button to view any associated metadata.
18. Metadata associated with the data element will be displayed here.
19. You can request access to the dataset using the contact details in the Summary section.
20. To return to the search results page, click on the Browser button.