Metadata

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Metadata is a structured and standardized subset of data, often described as ‘data about data’. They contain, among other, administrative information about the data (Title, author, language, format, date, embargo period, editor, license, access conditions, etc.) Metadata is used by repositories and browser to catalog data and further facilitate data finding and reuse. Metadata also serve as a bibliographic record for citation

There are international standards for metadata (DublinCore, DataCite Metadata Schema). However, metadata may depend on the repository and/or discipline. If you want further information on your research community standard of metadata, look at the catalogue of disciplinary metadata standards http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/metadata-standards

Metadata is usually pretty straightforward to create when sharing a dataset via a Research Data Repository, as they consist in text fields or drop-down menu to fill in. If your data can be made available in an open fashion, a data repository is generally the FAIR-est way to go.

(this information contributes to the “F”, and “A” of FAIR data management)

In other cases, metadata generators exist such as this one :https://nsteffel.github.io/dublin_core_generator/generator.html

Back to Document your data
Back to Managing Your Research Data
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