There are long lists of metadata standards (an agreed upon way of developing and using metadata for a field) for many disciplines and each of those schemes have lots of documentation that someone expects you're going to read. We saved you some time by illustrating some of the most commonly used ones in their fields.
Discipline | Standard |
---|---|
General Research Data | Dublin Core |
Social Sciences | Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) |
Medical Data |
NIH Common Data Elements (CDE) Clinical Trials.gov Protocol Registration Data Elements Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) Common Data Model (CDM) HUPO Proteomics Standards Initiative (PSI) |
Ecology, Geosciences, & Biology |
Ecological Metadata Language (EML) Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations (MIBBI) |
Material Science | Crystallographic Information Framework (CIF) |
Geographic |
Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM), Vers. 2 (FGDC-STD-001-1998) |
This table inspired by Oregon State University Libraries' guide on Metadata/Documentation
Unless you work with metadata regularly, the different definitions of these ideas are confusing. Here are some basic definitions to clarify the terminology. Definitions taken from: Pomerantz, J. (2015). Metadata. MIT Press.
Here are some great resources for learning about metadata and standards