The Planetary Data System (PDS) has been mandated by NASA not merely to preserve the bytes returned by its planetary spacecraft, but to ensure those data are usable through generations - 50-100 years into the future. When PDS accepts data for archiving, it must be complete, thoroughly documented, and as far as possible autonomous within the archive (that is, everything needed to understand and use the data must be in the archive as well). Two pillars support the PDS mission: The PDS4 Information Model, and the mandatory External Peer Review. The PDS4 Information Model codifies metadata not just for structure, but for provenance, interpretation, and analysis as well. The XML document structures defined for the current implementation of the model and its various constituent namespaces define minimum requirements and present best practices for describing all these aspects of the archival data. The schematic enforcement of these requirements provides a simple, automated approach to ensuring the metadata are present and well-formed. The PDS External Peer Review is required for all data prior to acceptance for archiving. Equivalent to the refereeing process for journal articles, The PDS External Peer Review presents the candidate data to discipline experts unaffiliated with the creation of the data. These reviewers exercise the data in its archival form by reproducing published results, doing comparative analysis between the candidate data and similar or correlated results, and so on, using only the archival resources. These reviewers then determine if the data are of archival quality, and where needed, formulate a list of corrections and additions required prior to archiving. Together, the Information Model guides data preparers to producing well-formatted, well-documented data products while the External Peer Review ensures the archive submission is complete, usable, and of sufficient quality to merit permit preservation - and support - as part of the Planetary Data System archives.
Link to PDF (may not be available yet): O7-2.pdf