DataCite Blog
  • Support
  • DataCite homepage

Proposed DataCite Metadata Schema Changes: Your Feedback Needed!

September 12, 2022October 17, 2022 Kelly Stathis and DataCite Metadata Working Group
https://doi.org/10.5438/q34f-c696

The DataCite Metadata Working Group has been working on the next version of the metadata schema—and we need your feedback!

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. You can find it here:

DataCite Metadata Schema 4.5: Request for Comments

We are interested in your comments, questions, and suggestions about the entire metadata schema—but we are particularly focused on the Version 4.5 proposed changes. These include:

  • Support for instruments
  • Support for pre-registrations and registration reports
  • Support for publisher identifiers
  • New Distribution property
  • Clarifications to RelatedItem property
  • Updated PhysicalObject definition

How to share feedback

There are a few different ways to share feedback with us. Here is a brief overview—for more details, head to DataCite Metadata Schema 4.5: Request for Comments, where we cover all of this in the Overview section. 

The schema change proposal will be open for comment through October 17, 2022.

Deadline extended to October 31, 2022.

Comment on the summary document

The summary document includes the major changes for Version 4.5. Here, you can leave comments and suggestions on all major proposed changes for Version 4.5, organized by use case. We have also shared some preliminary thoughts on the direction we’re heading for Version 5.0.

(If you need it, we have also made the summary document available as a PDF.)

Comment on the full draft schema

If you would like to comment on the full draft schema, it is available online here:
https://datacite-metadata-schema.readthedocs.io/en/4.5_draft/index.html 

To leave feedback, scroll down to the bottom of a given page and use the comment box. You will need a GitHub account to use this feature.

Other ways to share feedback

Our goal is to make this feedback process as accessible and transparent as possible. If the above options do not work for you, and you would like to share your feedback publicly, please send your feedback to support@datacite.org and indicate that you would like us to post it on your behalf. You can also email us with any questions about the process.

What happens next?

Over the next several months, we will be focusing on reviewing your feedback and getting everything ready for the release of Version 4.5 in early 2023.

Reviewing and incorporating feedback

After the comment period, the Metadata Working Group will consider your feedback and make a decision as to how to incorporate the feedback in Version 4.5, consider for future releases, or adapt feedback based on community consensus. 

Refining our documentation

We are excited about a new format for the metadata schema documentation: we are trying out Read the Docs, which uses a documentation generator (sphinx) to create a website for the documentation from a series of text files. Hopefully, this is easier to navigate than the previous PDF document. Please let us know if there are ways it could be improved—it is still a work in progress! (And if you prefer the PDF format, fear not: the same set of text files will be used to generate a PDF too.)

Updating the XML examples

While you are reviewing this schema change proposal, we will also be busy updating the XML examples, which we plan to share alongside the final release of Version 4.5.

Planning for 5.0

The last major version of the DataCite Metadata Schema was Version 4.0, which was released in September 2016—almost six years ago! All minor versions (4.X) are backwards compatible with Version 4.0, meaning that they do not introduce breaking changes. 

While working on Version 4.5, we encountered several challenges where the optimal solution would require a breaking change. Some of these ideas are outlined in the “Future Directions: Version 5.0 and beyond” section of the summary document.

Our next big project is to start addressing these challenges—along with many others we have heard from the community—in Version 5.0. In the coming months, we will share more about how you can follow what we are working on,contribute ideas, and collaborate with us on solutions.

Closing thoughts

Please leave us your comments, questions, and suggestions in the summary document or on the full schema draft before October 17, 2022. 

Deadline extended to October 31, 2022.

As a member-driven organization, we are pleased to open the DataCite metadata schema review process to the public. In this way, we want to ensure that all feedback from the community is heard, because a global standard can only evolve in accordance with the people who use it. We therefore look forward to hearing from you!

Photo of Kelly Stathis
Kelly Stathis
Blog posts
  • Kelly Stathis
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kelly-stathisdatacite-org/
    Welcome our new DataCite Committee Members
  • Kelly Stathis
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kelly-stathisdatacite-org/
    Full API support for DataCite Metadata Schema 4.4
  • Kelly Stathis
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kelly-stathisdatacite-org/
    Updating our metadata schema suggestions process
  • Kelly Stathis
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kelly-stathisdatacite-org/
    Towards richer metadata - perspectives from three DataCite projects
DataCite Metadata Working Group
Blog posts
    This author does not have any more posts.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Metadata, Metadata Schema.

© 2022 Kelly Stathis and DataCite Metadata Working Group. Distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.


Post navigation

Happy 10th Anniversary, re3data!
Nelson Memo: relevance for research data

Recent Posts

  • New Release of Fabrica: Improvements Inspired by User Feedback
  • Welcome our new DataCite Committee Members
  • Wellcome Trust and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Partner with DataCite to Build the Open Global Data Citation Corpus
  • Full API support for DataCite Metadata Schema 4.4
  • DataCite Celebrate and Reflect on a Year of Global Community Collaboration

Tags

Anniversary (3) API (3) Bibliometrics (2) Citation (8) Conference (2) Content negotiation (2) Crossref (10) CSV (4) Data-level metrics (9) Data citation (7) Discovery (2) Docker (3) DOI (18) Dublin core (2) Fabrica (4) FAIR (5) FORCE11 (2) FREYA (8) Github (2) Google (2) GraphQL (7) IGSN (5) Impactstory (2) Infrastructure (13) MDC (7) Members (11) Metadata (34) Open hours (2) ORCID (17) Organization identifiers (4) PIDapalooza (5) PID graph (8) Policy (2) RDA (8) Re3data (11) React (2) ROR (5) Schema.org (3) Search (3) Services (5) Software (2) Software citation (5) Staff (6) Strategy (2) THOR (13)

Archives

  • January 2023 (4)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (3)
  • October 2022 (5)
  • September 2022 (6)
  • August 2022 (3)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (3)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (2)
  • February 2022 (3)
  • January 2022 (1)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (3)
  • October 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • June 2021 (1)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (2)
  • March 2021 (2)
  • February 2021 (3)
  • January 2021 (3)
  • December 2020 (1)
  • November 2020 (2)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (4)
  • August 2020 (3)
  • July 2020 (3)
  • June 2020 (2)
  • May 2020 (3)
  • April 2020 (2)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (4)
  • December 2019 (3)
  • November 2019 (3)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (3)
  • June 2019 (2)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (6)
  • March 2019 (2)
  • February 2019 (5)
  • January 2019 (1)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (3)
  • October 2018 (4)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (4)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • February 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (4)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • June 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (5)
  • March 2017 (2)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (2)
  • October 2016 (5)
  • September 2016 (3)
  • August 2016 (1)
  • July 2016 (3)
  • June 2016 (1)
  • May 2016 (6)
  • April 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (2)
  • January 2016 (2)
  • December 2015 (3)
  • November 2015 (3)
  • October 2015 (8)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (6)

About

  • What we do
  • Governance
  • Members
  • Steering groups
  • Team
  • Job opportunities

Services

  • Create DOIs with Fabrica
  • Discover metadata with Commons
  • Integrate with APIs
  • Partner services

Resources

  • Metadata schema
  • Support
  • Fee model

Community

  • Members
  • Partners
  • Steering groups
  • Service providers
  • Roadmap
  • FAIR Workflows

Contact us

  • Imprint
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Mail
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Mastodon
  • GitHub
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
We use cookies on our website. Some are technically necessary, others help us improve your user experience. You can decline non-essential cookies by selecting “Reject”. Please see our Privacy Policy for further information about our privacy practices and use of cookies.
RejectAccept
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT