’By making data easier to find, others can use it too in their research’

Ronald Pijnenburg in the Earth Simulation Laboratory, photo by Annemiek van der Kuil, PhotoA This spring Utrecht University geoscientists will launch a new metadata catalogue. But what exactly is such a catalogue, and how can it help you as a scientist? Project manager Ronald Pijnenburg gives us a tour of the new system. He explains why the catalogue brings something new, and why this system is reusable within other research disciplines. More and more scientists publish their research data on online platforms. The data is often publicly available; anybody who wants to can download and use a dataset. However, this is easier said than done, because for each discipline there are hundreds of places to share research data. How do you find the data relevant to your research in all these scattered sources? The answer to this question:  with the help of a metadata catalogue.