We are pleased to announce that all DataCite APIs now have full support for metadata schema version 4.4. As of today, all DataCite APIs include full support for the RelatedItem property and the relationType IsPublishedIn.
Metadata
Updating our metadata schema suggestions process
As a community-driven organization, we believe it is critical that our members shape the DataCite metadata schema. The Metadata Working Group consists of 10-16 community representatives, who work on improving the metadata schema based on what we learn from the DataCite community. For the upcoming metadata schema 4.5, we launched our first community feedback process this fall to gather your input on the draft metadata schema. We’ve also heard that our community would like more involvement in shaping the metadata schema before changes reach the proposal stage.
Towards richer metadata – perspectives from three DataCite projects
Metadata is at the heart of DOIs and open scholarly infrastructure. At DataCite, our metadata schema defines what metadata properties can be included through DOI registration. The schema currently includes just six required properties—identifier (the DOI), creator, title, publication year, publisher, and resource type—along with 14 recommended and optional properties.
On the one hand, requiring only six metadata properties keeps the schema flexible and makes it easy to get started with DOI registration. At the same time, we want to encourage all DataCite Metadata Schema users to go beyond the mandatory properties and to share rich metadata that includes all available information about a given resource. This is especially important for metadata properties that are essential for discoverability—such as description and subject—and building connections between PIDs—including identifiers for related resources, people, and organizations. Keeping metadata up-to-date is also critical to ensure that the “persistent” part of persistent identifiers lives up to its full potential.
ConfIDent about PIDs: Using DataCite DOIs for Conferences
The ConfIDent project focuses on the development of a service platform for scientific events. ConfIDent aims to help researchers find relevant conferences in their field and to share information about conferences. The project is led by TIB – German National Library of Science and Technology and the Department of Information Systems & Databases at RWTH Aachen University (Chair of Computer Science 5).
Grounding Indigenous Rights in DataCite metadata
Local Contexts is an organization dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities to manage their intellectual and cultural property, cultural heritage, environmental data and genetic resources within digital environments. Local Contexts recognizes the inherent sovereignty that Indigenous communities have over knowledge and data that comes from their lands, territories, and waters.
Proposed DataCite Metadata Schema Changes: Your Feedback Needed!
Over the past year and a half, the Metadata Working Group has been working on changes to support the evolving use cases for DataCite DOIs. These proposed updates are in response to requests from DataCite community members and also in alignment with pillar 3 of DataCite’s strategic plan—that is, to “identify and connect all resource types held by research organizations globally.”
We want to make sure these changes work—that they solve the problems that they are intended to solve—and we want to hear from you! For the first time, we are sharing a draft proposal before releasing the next metadata schema version.