Review Process
Every dataset submitted to the e!DAL-PGP repository undergoes a manual inspection before it is publicly released and assigned a DOI. This quality assurance process ensures that all data not only adheres to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) but also complies with established community standards and best practices.
Who performs the review?
Section titled “Who performs the review?”The review is conducted by the IPK Data Stewardship Team. This team consists of two roles:
- Technical Reviewers: IT specialists who check the data integrity, storage requirements, and format interoperability.
- Scientific Curators: Domain experts who verify the metadata description, scientific context, and adherence to biological data standards.
What is reviewed?
Section titled “What is reviewed?”The curation team evaluates the submission based on three main pillars:
1. Technical Validation & Community Standards
Section titled “1. Technical Validation & Community Standards”- Community Standards: The use of established plant science standards is strictly enforced.
- Phenomics: Compliance with MIAPPE (Minimum Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment).
- Metadata Structure: Use of the ISA (Investigation-Study-Assay) framework for describing experimental setups.
- File Formats: The repository prioritizes open, non-proprietary formats (e.g.
.csv,.txt,.png) over proprietary ones (e.g..xlsx,.doc). The most appropriate format for the specific data type must be used to ensure long-term accessibility and reuse. - Structure: The folder hierarchy must be logical and accessible.
- Accessibility: Submissions containing single, massive ZIP archives are typically rejected. Users are required to upload uncompressed folder structures to allow file-level browsing and previewing.
2. Metadata Quality
Section titled “2. Metadata Quality”- Completeness: Are all mandatory fields (Title, Authors, Affiliations) filled correctly?
- Context: Is the abstract (Description) sufficiently detailed for a third party to understand the experiment without having to read the associated paper?
- PID Linkage: Are authors linked via ORCID? Is the associated research paper linked via DOI?
3. Formal & Legal Checks
Section titled “3. Formal & Legal Checks”- License Compatibility: Is the selected license (Standard: CC BY 4.0) appropriate for the data type?
- Privacy: Does the dataset contain sensitive personal data (e.g. in survey results) that must be anonymized?
Once the review is initiated, the system triggers the first communication to the user.