Research metadata is essentially data about data. Properly describing and documenting data will allow yourself and users to track the important details about your work. The goal with metadata is to help in the search and retrieval of data after it has been deposited into a repository, and it is also an important step to making data FAIR.
Some underlying principles to metadata are:
- Anyone may access the metadata free of charge.
- The metadata may be re-used in any medium without prior permission for not-for-profit purposes and re-sold commercially provided the OAI Identifier or a link to the original metadata record are given
Metadata gives a user the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the data when taken in context with your research. The following are non-exhaustive examples of how you might set up metadata:
At the project level:
- What is the research about?
- Descriptive information about the experiment (e.g. methods, processes, measurements, software)
- What references were used?
- The types of files generated (file formats e.g. csv, txt, png, pdf, etc.)
At the file level:
- Are there specific access rights or licensing?
- Which version is the most current?
Metadata Standards
A metadata standard is a defined set of metadata fields that can be general or discipline specific. Some standards will describe general information such as bibliographic metadata, while other will describe specific data types. It is important to determine the correct metadata standard for your specific research discipline. The University of Bath in the UK mantains a Metadata Standards Catalog and API that allows you to find standard for your specific discipline.
Examples of metadata standards
- Dublin Core - domain agnostic, basic and widely used metadata standard.
- DDI (Data Documentation Initiative) - common standard for social, behavioural and economic sciences, including survey data EML (Ecological Metadata Language) - specific for ecology disciplines.
- ISO 19115 and FGDC-CSDGM (Federal Geographic Data Committee's Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata) - for describing geospatial information.
- MINSEQE (Minimal information about high throughput Sequencing Experiments) - Genomics standard
- FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) - Astronomy digital file standard that includes structured, embedded metadata.
