Bridging the data discovery gap: User-centric recommendations for research data repositories

ESIP Discovery Cluster Meeting, April 17, 2026

Mingfang Wu, Australian Research Data Commons

The ESIP Discovery Cluster invites you to a presentation by Mingfang Wu of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). Mingfang will present recent work from the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Data Discovery Paradigms Interest Group, highlighting recommendations from the Data Science Journal paper Bridging the Data Discovery Gap: User‑Centric Recommendations for Research Data Repositories.

This talk is relevant to data scientists working on discovery interfaces, metadata strategy, semantic search, and cross‑repository discovery systems.

Why This Matters for the Discovery Cluster:

Building of multiple areas of interest from the ESIP community—such as user‑centered discovery design—this paper provides a fresh, evidence‑based framework for improving data discovery.  The recommendations from Mingfang’s paper may provide a framework for regrouping the ESIP discovery cluster, and this consultation with RDA efforts may also establish great collaboration between these communities.

Using the Paper’s Recommendations to Guide Cluster Reorganization:

The paper’s four major recommendation themes are:

• Understanding user needs and search behaviors to inform repository and interface design

• Improving integration with the wider discovery ecosystem to increase dataset visibility

• Enhancing metadata quality and alignment with real user terminology and search patterns

• Optimizing discovery interfaces and APIs for both human and machine-driven discovery

These areas could form the basis of new ESIP Discovery Cluster working topics, future meeting themes, and potential collaborative opportunities. Link to Mingfang's presentation: File:ESIP discovery cluster MingfangWu 20260417.pdf

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