Participatory Prototype Design: Developing a Sustainable Metadata Curation Workflow for Maternal Child Health Research

Abstract

This paper describes the findings from a participatory prototype design project, where the authors worked with maternal and child health (MCH) researchers and stakeholders to develop a MCH metadata profile and sustainable curation workflow. This work led to the development of three prototypes: 1) a study catalogue hosted in Dataverse, 2) a metadata and research records repository hosted in REDCap and 3) a metadata harvesting tool/dashboard hosted within the Shiny RStudio environment. We present a brief overview of the methods used to develop the metadata profile, curation workflow and prototypes. Researchers and other stakeholders were participant-collaborators throughout the project. The participatory process involved a number of steps, including but not limited to: initial project design and grant writing; scoping and mapping existing practices, workflows and relevant metadata standards; creating the metadata profile; developing semi-automated and manual techniques to harvest and transform metadata; and end project sustainability/future planning. In this paper, we discuss the design process and project outcomes, limitations and benefits of the approach, and implications for researcher-oriented metadata and data curation initiatives.