Participatory Approaches to Metadata Design for Scientific Data Accessibility

ECODOC is studying how metadata for scientific data should be designed in a participatory manner, as it connects the narratives of scientists and non-specialist audiences to improve access to data. Academic circles are increasingly calling for openness in science, in the name of integrity and dialogue between science and society (Mikou, 2023). Policies promoting open data are reflected in repositories, standards (FAIR), and management plans (Vitari & Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2024). However, these initiatives are primarily aimed at scientific efficiency rather than mediation with citizens. This raises the question of the conditions for making data truly accessible and usable by non-specialists. This is the challenge of the ECODOC project, a citizen science project that aims to design a device for accessing data produced by forest ecology research for a lay audience. Opening up to the general public requires specific work on metadata and descriptions to enable understanding of the projects, navigation of the documents, and manipulation of the data. Designing such a system amounts to establishing a diplomacy of data and metadata, based on listening to and negotiating the narratives of science reception. Metadata is not limited to technical descriptors: it connects and guides uses. Their choice must integrate the games of narration and reformulation of scientific discourse (Pétroff, 1984), in order to build a participatory mediation framework (Boyd, 2019). Our methodology thus brings together researchers and citizens to produce scientific narratives (relation-narration) and collectively deduce metadata (relation-description). This approach reveals that scientific narratives generate varied relational systems, requiring multiple metadata. The device then becomes a sensitive object of mediation, working on the legibility, circulation, and aesthetics of science (Rancière, 2000).