Coming into this project it seems to me that there are certain logical categories of information that metadata is grouped in. Initially I had seven categories (* below) but there are three others (4/28/15) I can think of and I decided to consolidate two in Qualities:
- Metadata - this is metadata about this record not the methodology itself, version, publisher, date, etc...
- Description* - general information
- Infrastructure - who is responsible for the analysis and their roles, where the analysis was developed/validated etc. (added 01/12/15)
- Analyte(s)* - identifiers and info about speciation, phase/fraction, state
- Materials - chemicals, glassware and supplies that are important to the analysis process [new 03-09-15]
- Sample(s)* - normally only one, what it is, where it came from, location if appropriate
- SamplePrep* - important info not overly detailed
- Technique(s)* - normally only one, instrumental/wet chemical, major characteristics (changed from Instrumental)
- Quality(ies)
- Metrics* - common analytical metrics that describe an analysis (moved 02/17/15)
- Statistics - statistical and chemometric tests run on data from the analysis (added 02/17/15)
- Validation* - how the method was validated, SRMs, spiked samples, QC data etc (moved 02/17/15)
- Example data - new category with calibration curves, chromatograms, spectra, peak tables (added 02/17/15)
- Concepts - standard vocabulary terms for concepts in chemical analysis (placeholder only) (01/27/15)
- Bibliography* - references to procedures/papers (removed - a citation can be added in the description)
Although this may look like a lot of information, in most (if not all) cases are going to use only a small submit of the fields, and even fewer will be 'required'. It is important here to try and capture all the information users might need/want.
