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The UK's largest digital collection of social sciences and population research data

Metadata standards

We actively promote and maintain metadata standards for describing collections and data in the social sciences. This work includes:

We actively promote and maintain metadata standards for describing collections and data in the social sciences. This work includes:

  • Working to develop robust metadata standards for economic and social science data through the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI). Our staff currently sit on the DDI Technical Implementation Group and the DDI Metadata Office, and we are implementing DDI4 in our Data Service as a Platform work
  • Implementing metadata standards in key data discovery tools like Nesstar, OAI, ReShare and QualiBank
  • Developing a robust approach to data citation, launching DataCite Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for all of our in-house data collection since 2012
  • Developing and maintaining key ontologies in the social science and publishing into SKOS (HASSET and ELSST)
  • Working with Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (CLOSER) to implement DDI3.2 into the CLOSER Discovery portal
  • Leading the development of an easy-to-use standard for complex qualitative data collections, through the use of QuDEx and TEI metadata standards
  • Actively supporting the Discovery Open Metadata Principles