Training Biomedical Researchers in Metadata with a MIBBI-Based Ontology

Recent initiatives in data management recognize that involving the researchers is one of the more problematic issues and that taking into account the practices of each domain can ease this process. We describe here an experiment in the adoption of data description by researchers in the biomedical domain. We started with a generic lightweight ontology based on the Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations (MIBBI) standard and presented it to researchers from the Institute of Innovation and Investigation in Health (I3S) in Porto. This resulted in seven interviews and four data description sessions using a RDM platform. The feedback from researchers shows that this intentionally restricted ontology favours an easy entry point into RDM but does not prevent them from identifying the limitations of the model and pinpointing their specific domain requirements. To complete the experiment, we collected the extra descriptors suggested by the researchers and compared them to the full MIBBI. Part of these new descriptors can be obtained from the standard, reinforcing the importance of common metadata models for broad domains such as biomedical research.