General Overview of the Core Module

The Core MDS contains metadata items commonly collected by any type of clinical, epidemiological or public health resource. The module comprises a general information section as well as sections for contributors, identifiers, and provenance of a resource. Items to trigger the nutritional epidemiology and chronic diseases modules, where applicable, are also incorporated. Along with the type of the NFDI4Health resource (e.g., study, registry, biobank, questionnaire, etc.), the general information section includes bibliographic information such as the NFDI4Health resource’s title, description, acronyms, keywords, and webpage. For certain NFDI4Health resource types, the section also provides information about the NFDI4Health resource’s use rights, its version, and format.

For information related to the development of the NFDI4Health resource, the contributors section provides metadata items about organizations and/or persons that have contributed to the resource. To link with other systems and ensure all relevant resources are covered, the identifiers section provides information about alternative identifiers that have been assigned to the resource by other registration systems (e.g., ct.gov). It also comprises identifiers of related resources (e.g., DOIs of related publications) registered on the NFDI4Health portal or elsewhere. Finally, the provenance section comprises items providing information about provenance aspects of data entry on the NFDI4Health portal. The majority of items were mainly adapted from established standards and models, including DataCite, ClinicalTrials.gov, the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS), Maelstrom, and MIABIS. The generic nature of the module enables its use by all types of resources wishing to register their metadata on the NFDI4Health portal.

Authors (with affiliations) of the Core MDS and the Module "Design":

Subgroup "Metadata schema and standard mapping" of the NFDI4Health and the NFDI4Health Task Force COVID-19:

  • Aliaksandra Shutsko, ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences
  • Carsten Oliver Schmidt, University Greifswald
  • Sophie Anne Ines Klopfenstein, Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  • Johannes Darms, ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences
  • Martin Golebiewski, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies
  • Carina Nina Vorisek, Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin
  • Haitham Abaza, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies