A contributor whose role is to check the integrity, accuracy, completeness, and conformance to schema of a dataset before its use, deposit, or publication — including range checks, plausibility tests, cross-source comparison, and metadata verification.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A data manager who ran all consistency checks on a clinical trial dataset before lock, named in the trial report's data-management section

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A researcher who eyeballs their own data for obvious errors is doing routine self-check, not data validation in the role sense

Editorial commentary

Captured under CRediT ‘Validation’ and CRediT ‘Data curation’. The role overlaps with but is distinct from open-data contribution (which also includes deposit and documentation). For large datasets, a named data validator’s role is increasingly disclosed in dataset records.

References

NISO CRediT Standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022)
RDA DMP Common Standard v1.1

Also known as

Data quality reviewer · Dataset validator

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Data validator"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-validator" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-validator",
  "name": "Data validator",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-validator",
  "description": "A contributor whose role is to check the integrity, accuracy, completeness, and conformance to schema of a dataset before its use, deposit, or publication — including range checks, plausibility tests, cross-source comparison, and metadata verification.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/data-validator",
  "sameAs": [
    "Data quality reviewer",
    "Dataset validator"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T01:59:57",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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