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Introduction

The safedata_validator package is built around making sure that datasets can be:

  • validated to a common standard,
  • archived in an easily accessible location (currently Zenodo), and
  • have an easily queried metadata database.

Together, these aims help ensure that the datasets are safely stored and can be easily found and reused by future researchers. However that does mean that the researchers collecting those datasets provide some (relatively!) simple metadata.

If you are planning to submit data which needs to pass safedata_validator, the process in overview is:

  • Prepare your data following the formatting information.

  • Submit the dataset to the data manager for the organisation you are submitting to, who will run the safedata_validator package on your dataset and provide automated feedback to help you address any issues:

    • If the validation succeeds then the dataset will be published on Zenodo. The dataset will be associated with the Zenodo community of the organisation you are submitting to.
    • If the validation fails then you will get an error report so you can fix the problems and resubmit.

  • Once the dataset is published, the metadata for your dataset will be added to the organisation metadata server, so that it can be searched to help data discovery.

Warning

You must not publish your dataset directly to Zenodo. This skips validation and means that the datasets are not linked together under a single curation account.

safedata at the SAFE Project

You can see published datasets for the SAFE Project Zenodo community.