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Analysis and Overview of CMR

NASA's Common Metadata Repository (CMR) is the centralized repository for NASA’s Earth science metadata and serves as a key vehicle for data search and discovery. In order to provide a more effective and consistent experience of this repository for researchers, there is a need to improve the quality of the metadata currently in CMR. This metadata improvement task is an ongoing, collaborative effort between NASA's Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), the CMR team, and the Interagency Implementation and Advanced Concepts Team (IMPACT) Analysis and Review of CMR (ARC) team.

Objectives and Goals

The ARC project contributes to Earth science data curation and stewardship activities by conducting metadata quality evaluations of records stored within CMR. The ARC team responsibilities include:

  • Reviewing metadata for quality from both the scientific and user perspectives
  • Identifying opportunities for improvement in the metadata records
  • Working with the data archives to resolve any and all identified issues
  • Developing methods to automate quality evaluation checks, and
  • Developing processes to minimize detected issues in the future.

The ultimate goal of the ARC project is to guarantee that all records currently in CMR, and all future records, will meet a minimum quality requirement. This commitment to quality ensures that data will be consistently accessible and discoverable by users.

Diagram of how ARC process works including ingesting of metadata and analysis and feedback.

Collaboration and Communication

IMPACT’s ARC team has established a collaborative approach by which to improve metadata quality. The ARC team contributes to the broader metadata quality community by:

  • Collaborating with DAAC metadata curators through the metadata curation dashboard
  • Improving metadata documentation to make metadata curation easier and to make ARC’s review processes more transparent
  • Generating quantitative metadata quality metrics to demonstrate DAAC improvements
  • Sharing relevant code, and
  • Reporting lessons learned to both NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project and the broader community.

Contact us for more information about the ARC team. You can access the metadata curation dashboard on GitHub.

The ARC team has also created a wiki site with resources dedicated to the curation effort.