the greek research infrastructure
for social sciences
Quantitative data make sense when documented on the basis of an additional data body: the metadata. The metadata mediate the secondary use of the data as well as their further utilization by humans and systems. Different metadata sets may be used to describe the same data by different researchers. But in the context of a coordinated data exchange in a wider research community, the establishment of different metadata becomes problematic for both the people who use it and the systems that support this exchange. Coordinated data exchange is achieved on the basis of commonly accepted documentation, initiative metadata. In this paper, the documentation initiatives for quantitative data will be presented, highlighting the significance of digital documentation in the first place. Finally, a comparative assessment of the documentation desings will be attempted.
