While scientists increasingly recognize the importance of metadata in describing their data, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for supplying this information despite their limitations in ensuring compliance and quality. Various tools have been developed to address these limitations, but they suffer from their own shortcomings, such as steep learning curves and limited customization. In this paper, we describe an end-to-end approach that supports spreadsheet-based entry of metadata while providing rigorous compliance and quality control. Our approach employs several key strategies, including customizable templates for defining metadata, integral support for the use of controlled terminologies when defining these templates, and an interactive Web-based tool that allows users to rapidly identify and fix errors in the spreadsheet-based metadata they supply. We demonstrate how this approach is being deployed in a biomedical consortium to define and collect metadata about scientific experiments.

翻译：尽管科学家们日益认识到元数据在描述其数据中的重要性，但电子表格仍是提供此信息的首选工具，尽管其在确保合规性和质量方面存在局限性。针对这些局限已开发出多种工具，但现有工具本身存在学习曲线陡峭、定制化能力有限等缺陷。本文提出一种端到端方法，在支持电子表格元数据录入的同时实施严格的合规与质量控制。该方法采用多项关键策略：通过可定制模板定义元数据，在模板定义中集成受控术语支持，并构建交互式Web工具使用户能快速识别和修正电子表格元数据中的错误。我们展示了该方法如何在生物医学联盟中部署，用于科学实验元数据的定义与收集。