Metadata quality assessment in institutional academic archives of research universities in Turkey

Institutional academic archive systems are systems created to store, organize, and protect necessary information. Institutional academic archive systems contain records of various types of publications and these records are archived through metadata. It is important to ensure access to publications by presenting the metadata of resources in institutional academic archives in an up-to-date, accurate, consistent and complete manner in accordance with standards. Many factors, such as the failure to present metadata policies for institutional academic archives in a standard structure and the failure to adapt workflows to the organizational structure, cause problems affecting the quality of the presentation of metadata of information resources. The main purpose of the study is to reveal the current status of the metadata of information sources in the institutional academic archives of research universities in Turkey in terms of completeness, consistency and accuracy quality elements. In the study, first of all, 656 information sources and 3.280 metadata belonging to the sources in the institutional academic archives of 20 research universities in Turkey were examined through content analysis. Then, data were collected and analyzed within the framework of a semi-structured interview technique with authorized persons working in the institutional academic archives of 18 research universities in Turkey, to identify the problems experienced in metadata quality in the information source metadata definitions in the institutional academic archives of research universities in Turkey. In the research, inconsistent, accurate, and incomplete source metadata definitions were detected in the institutional academic archive systems of research universities in Turkey. According to this; Capitalization and punctuation errors in metadata fields, missing metadata entries, item fields that have not been entered in the system, incorrect information, spelling differences, and abbreviation problems have been identified. Study findings show that most problems occur in the accuracy criterion in metadata fields. Additionally, it has been revealed that the most fundamental problem in ensuring metadata quality in the institutional academic archive systems of research universities in Turkey is the need for training. In the process of defining metadata in institutional academic archives, deficiencies in the data management plan, workflow procedure, and quality control business processes are noteworthy. Lack of budget, access, staff, and technical support; Problems such as lack of standardization, copyright issues, problems in mass transfer, software, and management support were also identified. In this context, it will be beneficial to carry out joint work in business processes to ensure metadata quality, to provide official training support for personnel, and to prepare official documents containing metadata quality control. It is thought that the results of the study will form the basis for research focused on institutional academic archive systems and will contribute to the realization of qualified metadata definitions by addressing the problems experienced in metadata definitions in the current situation.