What is metadata for publication and how is it used? Part 2: Metadata standards

This text is based on a presentation by Katerina Bartzi during a workshop for scholarly journal editors.1 Check the presentation here
This text was reviewed by Katerina Bartzi and by the members of OPERAS’ Common Standards and FAIR Principles Special Interest Group2.
Introduction
In our previous post, we discussed how the transition from analog to digital systems changed the ways in which we search and organize resources while focusing on the role of metadata. Having presented the various definitions of metadata and their different types, we now pay attention to metadata standards as a crucial element that enhances metadata quality.
Metadata is data about other data. It is information presented in a structured format that contains data about the description and other characteristics of a resource and support functions associated with it. According to the type of information, metadata can be characterized as descriptive, structural, or administrative. Qualitative metadata makes a work findable, interoperable, usable, and reusable. It thus opens pathways for better analysis, new research, new products, and new data. After understanding the concept of metadata, we can focus on improving metadata quality by presenting metadata standards.
Metadata standards
Metadata schemes
Metadata schemes define a set of data elements, the attributes of each of them, and the rules regarding the use of such elements in order to describe a resource. They are usually developed and maintained by standards organizations. They can be general or subject-specific, the latter applied to a particular type of collection as archives or art collections.
Choosing a standard depends on several factors. For example, the type of material, the target audience, the purpose for using the resource, the software used, or the available technologies.
| Metadata Standards | Purpose (The standard focuses on metadata for) |
| Dublin Core | web resources |
| DataCite | publication and citation of research data |
| ΤΕΙ | representation of all types of texts in digital form, mainly applied in the humanities and the social sciences |
| MARC standards | bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form |
| MODS | bibliographic information, particularly to library applications |
| METS | descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata, particular to libraries |
| EAD | archival description |
| FOAF | describing people and organizations |
| schema.org | a variety or resources types and their subcategories: creative works, embedded objects, events, organizations, people, places, products and transactions, reviews and ratings and actions |
Content standards
Content standards provide rules and guidelines to describe resources in a structured way. They indicate the essential metadata and the type of information they contain. These standards also give details on catalog instructions, such as how to use abbreviations or capitalizations. Furthermore, they promote the use of vocabularies.
| Content Standards | Guidelines and instructions for: |
RDA | library and cultural heritage resource metadata (Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a standard for descriptive cataloging initially released in June 2010, providing instructions and guidelines on formulating bibliographic data. Intended for use by libraries and other cultural organizations such as museums and archives, RDA is the successor to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2). See Wikipedia) |
ISAD | archival description (ISAD(G) defines a list of elements and rules for the description of archives and describes the kinds of information that must and should be included in such descriptions. It creates a hierarchy of description that determines what information should be included at what level. See Wikipedia) |
| RAD | archival description (The Rules for Archival Description (RAD) is the Canadian archival descriptive standard. It provides a set of rules based on traditional archival principles, whose purpose is to provide a consistent and commonly shared descriptive foundation for describing archival materials within a given fonds. See Wikipedia) |
Controlled vocabularies
Controlled vocabularies are an organized arrangement of preferred terms about a topic. Such terms are used to describe resources and are provided as metadata in order to improve indexing, search, and retrieval. Each term includes preferred and variant terms (synonyms), defines relations between terms and may provide term history and scope notes managed to aggregate or the related information under a single concept.
The use of controlled vocabularies enables systems to talk to each other as we all use the same term to refer to the same concept. For example, according to the UNESCO thesaurus, it is preferred to use the term “population increase” instead of “population growth”. Some common types of controlled vocabularies are thesauri, subject heading lists, authority files for people, organizations, places, etc., and classification schemes.
| Vocabularies to control: | Examples |
| Subjects | Thesauri: Unesco thesaurus, Eurovoc, AGROVOC Multilingual Agricultural Classification schemes: Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) Subject Heading Lists: Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) |
| Resource types | Thesaurus, Getty AAT, COAR Resource Types Vocabulary |
| Persons and Corporate bodies | Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) |
| Places | Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), Geonames |
| Languages | ISO 639-2 Codes for Representation of Names of Languages |
Dublin Core
Dublin Core is the most common metadata standard. It provides a set of 15 core metadata terms for the description and use of a wide range of resources. Being simple and easy to understand and use, it has become popular. It can be used in relation to other standards in the context of application profiles.
Dublin Core has two levels: (a) the simple Dublin Core, which consists of the basic elements; and (b) the Qualified Dublin Core, which is an extension of the format. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI Metadata Terms) incorporates both levels, producing a more robust approach to a resource description.
| Title | Creator | Subject |
| Identifier | Publisher | Coverage |
| Date | Contributor | Type |
| Language | Description | Format |
| Relation | Source | Rights |
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative provides additional properties. Some examples are the sub-properties for date types, relation types, and rights.
Dublin Core does not define which terms are mandatory. However, depending on the catalog needs, each scheme defines mandatory, recommended, and optional metadata.
Mandatory metadata is usually the title, the date of publication, the type, the rights (license), and the identifier. As we can see, most of these elements are descriptive metadata, carrying important and useful information that contributes to the identification and findability of resources.
The publisher, the source, the contributor, and the language are mandatory if applicable. For instance, if the resource is an article, the user might need to know the language of the content. Also, if the resource is part of a larger one, as in the case of an article on an issue, metadata about the issue should also be provided. Metadata that contains information about funding projects and providers (e.g., funder identifier, project identifier) should also be mandatory if applicable, i.e., when the resource described has been created via funding.
Some types of metadata are strongly recommended, such as the subject and the description. The recommended practice for the subject is to use a term from a controlled vocabulary, which can be enhanced by freely used keywords. As for the description, it may include an abstract, a table of contents, or the methodology used to create the resource.
To learn a bit more
Identifier
- The DCMI defines identifiers as “an unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context”.
- Some common examples of identifiers are ISBN and ISSN.
- Persistent identifiers (PIDs) are particularly recommended. They give a unique name to an entity (a person, an organization, a place or an object), thus these entities gain credibility and findability. PIDs can be provided as HTTP URIs. Some examples of persistent identifiers are: ORCID (ID for people), DOI (ID for digital objects)
License
- A very special group metadata is the one that refers to rights metadata, specially the license of use. Every work is protected by copyright and the license tells users how to use it and for what purposes under copyright law.
- The DCMI defines a license as “a legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource”.
- The license encourages the reuse in a legal manner, supports sharing and distribution of resources. A recommended practice is to employ a broadly used license, like the Creative Commons Licenses.
- Creative Commons Licenses are public licenses commonly used in the Open Access publishing environment.
Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.
Source: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

Creative Commons
As metadata, these licenses can be understood by both humans and machines There are six types of Creative commons licenses which are more or less permissive according to some conditions: attribution, non-commercial, non derivatives (does not allow modification), share alike
Conclusion
Metadata is important for the quality of a resource as it increases data value. Metadata standards, schemas, vocabularies, and description rules ensure useful data for creative reuse.
References
Glossary of Library Information Science. https://www.librarianshipstudies.com/2015/04/glossary-of-library-information-science.html
DCMI Metadata Terms. Section 1: Introduction and Definitions.
Creative Commons Licenses. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/
Harpring, P. (2010). Introduction to controlled vocabularies (Getty Research Institute). Retrieved February 3, 2023, from https://www.getty.edu/research/publications/electronic_publications/intro_controlled_vocab/index.html
Open Content – A Practical Guide to Using Creative Commons Licences/The Creative Commons licencing scheme. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Content_-_A_Practical_Guide_to_Using_Creative_Commons_Licences/The_Creative_Commons_licencing_scheme
Riley, Jenn. 2017. Understanding Metadata: What is Metadata, and What is it For?: A Primer. NISO. https://www.niso.org/publications/understanding-metadata-2017
Βασιλογαμβράκης, Ν., Λαγούδη Ε., Μπάρτζη, Κ., Παναγοπούλου, Αλ. “Μια προσέγγιση της καλλιτεχνικής παραγωγής βασισμένη στα δεδομένα : πως η τεκμηρίωση της καλλιτεχνικής παραγωγής των δημιουργών ωφελεί τους ίδιους, τις Σχολές Καλών Τεχνών και την κοινωνία” στο Διεθνές Συνέδριο Για μια Σχολή Εικαστικών Τεχνών του 21ου Αιώνα, Φλώρινα, 12 έως 14 Μαΐου 2017 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12776/16489
Featured image
“Folders Vs Metadata” by john-norris is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Katerina Bartzi is an Information scientist, working for the National Documentation Center, Greece, in open access content infrastructures and documentation services. She focuses on digital content strategy, data modeling and linking, terminology, and metadata. [↩]
- The SIG “Common Standards and FAIR Principles” aims at exploring the workflows, mediums, and technical standards that have recently resulted from the changes brought about by the transition to Open Science. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Karla Avanço (February 3, 2023). What is metadata for publication and how is it used? Part 2: Metadata standards. The road to FAIR. Retrieved June 12, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/trry