Concept
Metadata
Metadata is data that describes other data (who, what, when, how) so that people and software can find, understand and reuse it.
How it connects
Related to
- Metadata relates to DOI. Each DOI is registered with metadata about the object; the metadata can be updated without changing the DOI.
- Metadata relates to FAIR. Findability and interoperability depend on rich metadata.
- Metadata relates to Metadata standard. Standards agree how metadata is structured and named.
- Metadata relates to OAI-PMH. The protocol exists to harvest metadata: a repository exposes its records and other services collect them.
- Metadata relates to ORCID iD. An ORCID record is structured metadata about a researcher: identity details, affiliations, works and funding.
- Metadata relates to Research data management. Managing data well includes describing it with the metadata others need to find and reuse it.
- Metadata relates to Research repository. Repositories describe each deposit with metadata that search services harvest.
- Metadata relates to ROR. Each ROR record is a structured metadata record about an organisation, and ROR IDs identify affiliations in the metadata of other records.
Links
Details
Description
Descriptive, administrative and technical metadata let search engines, indexes and repositories find, connect and reuse a record without opening it. Most of the FAIR principles depend on good metadata.
Attributes
| url | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata |
|---|---|
| identifiers | wikidata: Q180160 |
| status | active |
| governance | Not applicable |
| prominence | core |
| type | Concept |
| Tags | region: global |
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata(opens in a new tab) (accessed 2026-11-12)
- https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q180160(opens in a new tab) (accessed 2026-11-12)
Last reviewed: 2026-11-12
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