General metadata vocabularies

Cross-disciplinary controlled values used to describe research resources, contributors, dates, identifiers, languages and technical formats consistently.

This resource provides practical guidance on selecting and recording standardised values for metadata fields shared across research domains, repositories and catalogue systems.

Using established vocabularies reduces ambiguity, supports automated validation and improves the exchange of metadata between repositories, DOI services, catalogues and research infrastructures.

Resource information

Purpose and scope

General metadata vocabularies define standard values for properties that occur across disciplines and types of research output.

They help repositories and researchers use the same meaning for concepts such as dataset, software, data curator, collection date, translated title, personal name, organisation and file format.

These vocabularies provide the cross-disciplinary layer of a metadata record. More detailed scientific concepts should be supplied through domain-specific vocabularies and ontologies.

General vocabulary families

Main vocabulary sources

Resource types

DataCite uses a broad controlled value in resourceTypeGeneral and permits a more specific free-text value in resourceType.

COAR Resource Types

COAR Resource Types should be used when a repository or aggregator needs a more detailed and hierarchically organised description than the broad DataCite categories provide.

Title types

The main title is recorded without a title type. Additional titles should use a controlled value explaining their function.

{
  "titles": [
    {
      "title": "Metadata profile for research datasets",
      "lang": "en"
    },
    {
      "title": "Профіль метаданих дослідницьких датасетів",
      "titleType": "TranslatedTitle",
      "lang": "uk"
    }
  ]
}

Description types

Contributor roles

DataCite contributor types identify how a person or organisation is associated with the described resource.

CRediT contributor roles

CRediT describes the specific activities through which an individual contributed to producing a research output.

Names and identifier schemes

Date types

Language tags

Use a standard language tag instead of entering the language name as unrestricted text.

Country codes

Use ISO 3166 codes for countries and territories when the metadata profile requires a controlled geographic value.

File formats and media types

Record the machine-readable media type separately from a filename extension and, where useful, from the human-readable format name.

How to record a controlled value

Where the metadata system supports structured values, record more than the displayed label.

{
  "value": "dataset",
  "conceptUri": "http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_ddb1",
  "vocabulary": "COAR Resource Types",
  "vocabularyVersion": "3.2",
  "language": "en"
}

Example of controlled values in a metadata record

{
  "resourceType": {
    "resourceTypeGeneral": "Dataset",
    "resourceType": "Computational materials dataset",
    "coarType": {
      "label": "dataset",
      "uri": "http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_ddb1"
    }
  },
  "titles": [
    {
      "title": "Example computational dataset",
      "lang": "en"
    },
    {
      "title": "Приклад обчислювального датасета",
      "titleType": "TranslatedTitle",
      "lang": "uk"
    }
  ],
  "contributors": [
    {
      "name": "Example Researcher",
      "nameType": "Personal",
      "contributorType": "DataCurator",
      "nameIdentifier": {
        "scheme": "ORCID",
        "uri": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097"
      },
      "creditRoles": [
        "Data curation",
        "Validation"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "affiliation": {
    "name": "Example Research Institution",
    "identifierScheme": "ROR",
    "identifier": "https://ror.org/example"
  },
  "dates": [
    {
      "date": "2026-07-01",
      "dateType": "Created"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-20",
      "dateType": "Issued"
    }
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "country": "UA",
  "formats": [
    {
      "formatName": "Comma-separated values",
      "fileExtension": ".csv",
      "mediaType": "text/csv"
    },
    {
      "formatName": "JSON",
      "fileExtension": ".json",
      "mediaType": "application/json"
    }
  ]
}

How to select a general metadata vocabulary

Mapping between general vocabularies

A local repository may need to translate the same value into several external representations.

Validation rules

Common implementation errors

How to use this resource