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DataCite Metadata Scheme is published

January 24, 2011 Author: Joan StarrCategories: Tags:

The DataCite Metadata Scheme has been finalized and is now available here (http://datacite.org/schema/DataCite-MetadataKernel_v2.0.pdf).

After many months and a lot of very early morning conference calls with my European colleagues, I am delighted to make this announcement. The core group that worked on this second iteration of the scheme came from:

  • British Library
  • California Digital Library
  • CISTI (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information)
  • DTU Library (Technical Information Center of Denmark)
  • ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich)
  • GESIS (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany)
  • TIB (German National Library of Science and Technology)
  • TU-Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Other members were involved in an advisory capacity as well. And, this iteration of the scheme also benefited greatly from the many helpful comments offered during the community review period we conducted in the late summer and early fall of 2010.

There are several key features to the metadata scheme, and my colleague Angela Gastl and I discuss these thoroughly in an article in the recent DLIB issue on research data. Briefly, these include a small mandatory set limited to those properties required for a data citation, as well as a carefully selected optional set that allows for the description of data and other resource relationships as desired.

The mandatory set is:

  • Identifier
  • Creator
  • Title
  • Publisher
  • PublicationYear

It is also notable that the DataCite organization is committed to supporting the scheme in a way that makes both very useful to DataCite’s own members  and also available to the broader community.

On the “useful to DataCite’s own members” thread, I’ll say from California Digital Library’s perspective that we are very glad that the scheme is now finalized. As some readers know, our DataCite application is EZID (http://n2t.net/ezid). Now, we will be able to update our local application to the DataCite standard. Look for increasing functionality and services over time.

EZID (with DataCite inside) is one of the key tools you need to take control of the management and distribution of your research, share and get credit for it, and build your reputation through its collection and documentation. Read more about EZID here, or contact us.