First draft of what could have been a very cool checklist for dataviz efforts where the data is also made reusable.
Structure and format
To be reusable, data needs to be structured consistently and to follow pre-existing standards, vocabularies, and formats.
The basics
- The data and metadata are provided in a non-proprietary, structured format.
- The data structure is defined.
- The metadata structure is defined.
Use of standards
- All labels in the dataset follow the same naming convention.
- The naming convention is made available along with the dataset.
- The vocabularies used in the dataset are consistent.
- Use of abbreviations in the dataset is consistent.
- References to other datasets or standards are identified (eg. ISO 3166 2-character country codes for countries, IANA TZ for timezones).
Units
- Units of measurement are defined for all fields.
- Date and time formats are defined.
Metadata
Good metadata will facilitate reuse of the dataset, providing the necessary information to identify provenance of the data but also providing context.
The basics
- Metadata is provided with the dataset
- Metadata is up to date
For the dataset, are documented
- Title
- Description
- Unique identifier
- Category
- Usage license
- Conditions of attribution, reuse, redistribution and commercialisation
- Creation date
- Last update date
- Publication date
- Author
- Publisher
- Mean of contact for the author or publisher
- Data transformations
- Data sources
- Changelog
- Update frequency
For geospatial datasets, are documented
- Coverage area
- Coordinate system
- Map projection
Data
Validation
- There are no duplicate records in the dataset.
- Missing records are accounted for, to decide whether to surface or ignore them.
- Record structure is the same for all records.
- Units of measurement are the same for all records.
- Missing values are accounted for, to decide whether to surface or ignore them.
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