Metadata is an essential aspect of academic publishing. It ensures accurate identification of a journal’s content and can improve discoverability, access, dissemination, preservation, and, arguably, research impact.
Given metadata’s important role in digital scholarly publishing, Coalition Publica is pleased to announce the publication of two important reports prepared by its Metadata Working Group.
- The Better Practices in Journal Metadata guide (also available in French) should prove an invaluable resource to journal editors who use OJS as well as the hosting providers who support them. This guide will be added to the PKP Docs Hub where it will be maintained in cooperation with PKP’s user community.
- The technical report Metadata Feedback for Coalition Publica (available in English only) provides valuable insight on emerging trends in scholarly publication metadata that Coalition Publica may need to integrate in the coming years.
The Metadata Working Group was convened at the beginning of 2019 for a two-year mandate to:
- Provide guidance and advice on best practices for metadata quality in library-hosted scholarly journals to ensure increased discoverability, especially for Coalition Publica’s dissemination service;
- Develop procedures and documentation to guide librarians and editors in assisting journals in their creation of high-quality metadata;
- Provide recommendations to Coalition Publica’s Operations Committee towards improving and encouraging better metadata within PKP’s and Érudit’s platforms.
Coalition Publica would like to extend our deepest thanks to the members of the Metadata Working Group, and especially its chair, Mike Nason, Scholarly Communications & Publishing Librarian at the University of New Brunswick, for the research and preparation of these reports:
- Lise Brin, Canadian Association of Research Libraries
- Haiyun Cao, York University
- Jessica Clark, Coalition Publica/Érudit, Université de Montréal
- Bart Kawula, Scholars Portal
- Inba Kehoe, University of Victoria
- Pierre Lasou, Université Laval
- Tomasz Mrozewski, York University
- Mike Nason (Chair), University of New Brunswick
- Mathieu Pigeon, Érudit, Université de Montréal
- Brianne Selman, University of Winnipeg
- Sarah Severson, University of Alberta
The reports will help inform Coalition Publica’s future work in the area of metadata quality, in collaboration with journals and libraries. Metadata quality has been and will continue to be a priority within Coalition Publica’s national infrastructure for digital scholarly publishing and research dissemination.
