On why to provide good metadata - you never know who might find it useful!

Today's course content was mainly aimed at molecular biologists (which is somewhat beyond my field of expertise). Johannes Bergsten provided an overview of DNA Barcoding, a way of identifying DNA samples to species level, while Henrik Nielsen introduced techniques allowing molecular biologists to extract data from Genbank to supplement their own data.

What interested me most about both presentations was that they showed that coordinates were often included as metadata of gene sequences. As part of my PhD I am hoping to set up a database on African Fabaceae to study their biogeography. In some ways this is a mammoth undertaking, given the diversity of the group and the often lacking (esp. in electronic format) data on African groups. Any source of information could thus be potentially useful. Therefore, I looked for information on locality records of legumes on BOLD Systems, the DNA Barcoding website; however, no information on African legumes was available here. As a test, Henrik helped me extract information on localities of South African Fabaceae from GenBank. No latitude/longitude information was available, though some localities were provided. Unfortunately, locality information was, with three exceptions, on the province scale (or broader), thereby making it of limited use for my purposes. What a pity! However, it made me realize once again that providing good metadata when publishing your data can be of great use for the scientific world in the long run. If these data are hidden in the deepest darkest depth of your scientific publication, it will be difficult to access and of limited use to people like us! (And, as an aside, wouldn't the fact that most research is funded by tax payers provide more incentive for these moneys to be put to wider use with minimal effort?)