Best Practices for Dataset Metadata in Ecological Metadata Language

Version 4

draft
These recommendations for creating EML metadata documents can be applied to most research datasets published by the environmental sciences community.
Authors
Affiliations

Gregory Maurer

New Mexico State University

Corinna Gries

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Gabriel Kamener

Florida International University

Sage Lichtenwalner

Rutgers University

Mary Martin

University of New Hampshire

Margaret O’Brien

University of California, Santa Barbara

John Porter

University of Virginia

Tim Whiteaker

University of Texas at Austin

LTER Network Information Management Committee

Various

Published

January 14, 2025

Abstract
This book presents “best practice” recommendations for creating metadata documents in the Ecological Metadata Language (EML), a widely accepted standard for research metadata exchange in the environmental sciences. The document focuses on the most common use-cases for EML, and recommends content and formatting for its most important and frequently-used metadata elements. As such, these recommendations can be applied to most research datasets that include EML metadata. There are also recommendations specific to the U.S. LTER Network and Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) repository. This is Version 4 of the book, updated in 2024 by the EML Best Practices Working Group of the LTER Network Information Management Committee.
Keywords

data management, EML, dataset, research, environmental science, metadata, publishing, guide, repository

Reuse

Citation

BibTeX citation:
@book{maurer2025,
  author = {Maurer, Gregory and Gries, Corinna and Kamener, Gabriel and
    Lichtenwalner, Sage and Martin, Mary and O’Brien, Margaret and
    Porter, John and Whiteaker, Tim and Network Information Management
    Committee, LTER},
  title = {Best {Practices} for {Dataset} {Metadata} in {Ecological}
    {Metadata} {Language}},
  version = {4},
  date = {2025-01-14},
  url = {https://prerelease-edi-docs.netlify.app/guide-eml-bp/},
  doi = {n/a},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {This book presents “best practice” recommendations for
    creating metadata documents in the Ecological Metadata Language
    (EML), a widely accepted standard for research metadata exchange in
    the environmental sciences. The document focuses on the most common
    use-cases for EML, and recommends content and formatting for its
    most important and frequently-used metadata elements. As such, these
    recommendations can be applied to most research datasets that
    include EML metadata. There are also recommendations specific to the
    U.S. LTER Network and Environmental Data Initiative (EDI)
    repository. This is Version 4 of the book, updated in 2024 by the
    EML Best Practices Working Group of the LTER Network Information
    Management Committee.}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Maurer, Gregory, Corinna Gries, Gabriel Kamener, Sage Lichtenwalner, Mary Martin, Margaret O’Brien, John Porter, Tim Whiteaker, and LTER Network Information Management Committee. 2025. Best Practices for Dataset Metadata in Ecological Metadata Language (version 4). Environmental Data Initiative. https://doi.org/n/a.