ZonMw Recommends CEDAR for FAIR Metadata Creation
The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) is taking concrete steps to improve the FAIRness of COVID-19 and health research data. As part of its national guidance on metadata, ZonMw highlights CEDAR as a key tool for researchers to create machine-readable, reusable metadata.
FAIR Starts with Metadata
In ZonMw’s official Guidance on Metadata (v2.0), the organization emphasizes that rich, structured metadata are essential to making data findable and reusable. To this end, ZonMw asks all funded researchers to document seven key metadata elements, ranging from persistent identifiers and data formats to controlled vocabularies and metadata schemas.
The guidance makes it clear: metadata need to be both human- and machine-readable, ideally using RDF-based formats, and aligned with community standards.
Why CEDAR?
ZonMw specifically names CEDAR as one of two recommended tools—alongside DTL’s MDE—for researchers who need to define and publish metadata but lack deep technical expertise. CEDAR allows users to:
- Build discipline-specific or general-purpose metadata templates,
- Use controlled vocabularies and ontologies,
- Export metadata in FAIR-compliant formats.
ZonMw notes that tools like CEDAR help researchers define metadata that meet funder requirements and are compatible with FAIR Data Points (FDPs).
Supporting National FAIR Goals
By endorsing CEDAR, ZonMw supports a broader strategy to improve metadata quality across Dutch research. Researchers in health, social science, and beyond now have a user-friendly, standards-compliant way to describe datasets and improve their reuse potential.
This recognition reinforces CEDAR’s role as a trusted, practical tool for metadata authoring in FAIR-aligned research ecosystems.
Learn more about ZonMw’s metadata guidance:
🔗 First steps towards data FAIRification in COVID-19 research