DatasetBiographyIndex

DatasetBiographyIndex (DBI) is a proposed metadata framework and registry intended to capture the biography of research datasets. The aim is to provide a structured record that documents a dataset’s origin, development, and lifecycle to support discovery, evaluation, and reuse. DBI emphasizes provenance, methodological context, and stewardship information to help researchers assess suitability and reliability.

Core elements typically include a persistent identifier, title, creators and funders, publication or release date, licensing, and access conditions; geographic and temporal coverage; variables and measurement units; sampling strategy; data collection methods; and data quality indicators. Additionally, a DBI record documents lineage and processing steps, version history, transformations, software and environments used, and links to related datasets or subset relationships. It may also include usage recommendations, ethical or legal restrictions, and citation guidance.

Implementation often envisions machine-readable serializations such as JSON-LD or RDF, aligns with metadata standards (for example Dublin Core, schema.org, PROV-O, or DataCite), and relies on persistent identifiers (DOIs, ORCID IDs) for creators and publishers. By design, the DBI supports interoperability with data catalogs, repositories, and publication systems, enabling automated indexing, search, and provenance tracing in reproducibility workflows.

Status and adoption: as of the mid-2020s, there is ongoing discussion among data stewardship communities about a unified dataset biography index. No universal standard has been codified, but several projects explore DBI-like catalogs within domain repositories. See also data catalog, data provenance, FAIR data, metadata standards.