Metadata

Metadata are data that provide information about other data, e.g. a description of the content of the data, the date when the data were produced or collected, tools and devices used to obtain data, file formats and sizes, the names of the people who created or collected data, relevant persistent identifiers, etc. Metadata should be created and provided in accordance with commonly used metadata standards, which may be general or discipline specific. This ensures that metadata can be understood by humans and processed and exchanged by machines.

Some metadata are automatically generated (by devices used to create and capture data) and embedded in data files, e.g. in digital audio and video recordings, while some have to be produced manually.
When depositing data in a repository, users are guided by the user interface through the process of providing metadata. In the input form, some metadata fields are mandatory, which means that the procedure cannot be completed if this information is not provided. It is highly recommended to provide as detailed information as possible even in non-mandatory fields.



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Structured and machine-readable data that describes and synthesises information about other entities, such as other data, processes or systems in a (preferable) standardized, unambiguous and stable wayThe term metadata can be interpreted differently according to the context and field. Metadata can help find, organize, cite, retrieve, reuse and understand data. Metadata, especially semantic annotations, can help to improve query-based machine processing. Metadata can describe the origin, time references, geographic location, creator, title, contributors, units of measure, abbreviations, codes used in the dataset, version information, instrument or protocol information, keywords, tags, etcMetadata makes data FAIR.

Alternative definition: Data about data
References: Riley J. (2017); Gollwitzer et al. (2020)Eichler E. et al. (2021); Ulrich H, Kock-Schoppenhauer A, et al. (2022) 
Linkshttps://forrt.org/glossary/metadata/
https://www.openaire.eu/what-is-metadata?highlight=WyJtZXRhZGF0YSJd and https://schema.datacite.org/


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