Overview

As research becomes increasingly data-driven, the quality and consistency of metadata play a critical role in ensuring research outputs remain discoverable, reusable, interoperable, and sustainable over time. Yet many research teams and support professionals face ongoing challenges with inconsistent formats, duplicated values, incomplete documentation, and fragmented workflows that limit the impact and reuse potential of valuable datasets.

This hands-on workshop responds to the growing need for practical metadata stewardship skills across the research landscape. Designed for Data Stewards and professionals supporting research data management, the session introduces approaches to efficiently clean, standardise, enrich, and transform metadata using tools such as OpenRefine.

Participants will explore how metadata practices support FAIR principles, data sharing, repository ingest, and cross-disciplinary reuse. Through practical exercises and collaborative discussion, attendees will gain experience addressing real-world metadata challenges commonly encountered in research environments.

Topics Covered

• Identifying and resolving issues in messy or inconsistent metadata using OpenRefine, including:
• Inconsistent naming conventions and date formats
• Clustering and merging equivalent values.
• Complex data transformations
• Batch editing
• Enhancing metadata quality and interoperability through:
• Controlled vocabularies and reconciliation services
• Persistent identifiers (e.g., ORCID, DOI)
• FAIR-aligned metadata practices
• Crosswalking between metadata standards through intellectual mapping and semi-automated workflow creation.
• Testing batch metadata ingest to repositories.

Key Activities

• Hands-On Session 1: Metadata Cleaning and Transformation with OpenRefine

• Hands-On Session 2: Metadata Standards, Reconciliation, and Interoperability

• Collaborative Challenge: Applying skills to a new dataset

• Group Discussion & Reflection

Pre-Workshop Requirements

In advance of the workshop, please:

1. Create a GitHub account and email your username to digitalpreservation@soton.ac.uk so we can share the learning materials with you.
2. Download OpenRefine and test that it is running on your machine.

About Digital Preservation Southampton

DPS is an enterprise unit based in Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. We offer consultancy, training, and data recovery services to organisations across sectors. To learn more about our regular series of workshops in digital preservation skills, visit our website.

NB: Links to join this session online will be sent out shortly before the training. Please note that this training has a capacity of 20 people, so if you sign up and are unable to attend please do cancel to allow someone else to take your place.