Scientific research metadata is vital to ensure the validity, reusability, and cost-effectiveness of research efforts. The MEDFORD metadata language was previously introduced to simplify the process of writing and maintaining metadata for non-programmers. However, barriers to entry and usability remain, including limited automatic validation, difficulty of data transport, and user unfamiliarity with text file editing. To address these issues, we introduce MEDFORD-in-a-Box (MIAB), a documentation ecosystem to facilitate researcher adoption and earlier metadata capture. MIAB contains many improvements, including an updated MEDFORD parser with expanded validation routines and BagIt export capability. MIAB also includes an improved VS Code extension that supports these changes through a visual IDE. By simplifying metadata generation, this new tool supports the creation of correct, consistent, and reusable metadata, ultimately improving research reproducibility.

翻译：科学研究元数据对于确保研究工作的有效性、可重用性和成本效益至关重要。此前引入的MEDFORD元数据语言旨在为非编程人员简化元数据编写和维护流程。然而，其入门门槛和可用性仍存在障碍，包括自动验证功能有限、数据传输困难以及用户对文本文件编辑不熟悉等问题。为解决这些问题，我们提出了MEDFORD-in-a-Box（MIAB）——一个旨在促进研究人员采用并实现更早期元数据捕获的文档生态系统。MIAB包含多项改进：更新后的MEDFORD解析器具备扩展的验证例程和BagIt导出功能；同时提供了增强版VS Code扩展，通过可视化集成开发环境支持这些新特性。该工具通过简化元数据生成过程，支持创建正确、一致且可重用的元数据，最终提升研究的可复现性。