COMET in Action: Pilots, Progress, and What Comes Next

Written By Clare Dean

Over the past 6 months of community collaboration, the COMET taskforce has co-created and articulated a new, community-led model for curating and enriching metadata using trusted, persistent identifiers. We outlined a vision, shared key value propositions, and invited individuals and organizations to join us in piloting this work. 

In response to our Community Call to Action, a wide range of stakeholders have endorsed COMET’s approach and reached out to get involved. From that interest, a clear set of early demonstration use cases have emerged. We will now be working on piloting these over the coming months, each one aligned with COMET’s approach to:

  • Unblocking community contributions to PID metadata

  • Creating shared workflows for trusted enrichment

  • Ensuring transparency and traceability for improvements.

Next Steps: Pilot Projects

Throughout the course of COMET taskforce activities, a recurring theme has been the central role of trust: in metadata sources, in the enrichment process, and in those stewarding the data. Building that trust depends on transparent processes, community oversight, and mechanisms that allow contributors to validate and improve metadata collectively.

Based on this community feedback and responses to our Call to Action, we surfaced valuable insights about how infrastructure, community, and governance can work together to advance metadata quality at scale. Our next phase of pilot development is now underway based on this feedback, and you can start following progress in our new GitHub space. 

Our pilots will focus on exposing real challenges in coordinating across systems that differ in architecture, incentives, and timelines. These complexities underscore the value of COMET as a neutral space where partners can align efforts, test ideas, and share approaches that might otherwise remain siloed. As we continue to refine our workflows and models, these pilots will serve as real-world laboratories that demonstrate what is possible, both technically and socially, laying the foundation for a scalable, sustainable, and community-led approach to metadata enrichment.

Next Steps: Community Action

This work will also continue to be driven forward by the COMET community, with regular opportunities to contribute to projects, recommend new activities, receive updates about project progress, and provide feedback through community calls and working sessions. Please register to join us on July 15 for our first COMET Community Meeting where we will outline our ongoing work and additional information on next steps. 

To help coordinate community activities and pilot projects, we’ve welcomed a designated COMET Project Lead, Dione Mentis, who will be working with community members and a stakeholder organizing team with representatives from California Digital Library (CDL), Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), DataCite, and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). We are also in the process of forming an advisory body, which will help to guide our future strategic direction, governance operations, technical development, and pilot projects.

 

Dione Mentis, DataCite, COMET Project Lead

 

Join Us

COMET is an open, community-led effort and you’re invited to be part of it. Whether you’re a metadata practitioner, researcher, developer, or simply curious about improving scholarly infrastructure, there’s a place for you in COMET.

  • Join our COMET Community group to stay connected, share ideas, and collaborate

  • Register to attend the next Community Meeting on July 15, 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm GMT.

  • Follow the pilot projects on the new COMET GitHub space as we test and refine our approaches in real-time

  • Have questions or ideas? Reach out at info@cometadata.org. We’d love to hear from you

Clare Dean
Next

Participant Perspectives |  European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)