Data Stewardship for Open Science

CHAPTER 5

Data cycle step 4: Data processing and curation

In this chapter, the actual processing of data once they are captured or created is addressed. The preprocessing and further processing of data and the associated metadata are core business for the data steward, but so are the workflows, procedures, terminology systems, and formats that will render the data suitable for initial analysis, as well as for reuse in review, reproduction of results, and in combination with other data for future studies, where there is a relatively strong emphasis on the workflows. In many cases, ill-developed or ill-monitored and badly described or unsustainable workflows are being used, which may create severe problems in data interpretation, and induce errors ...