Metadata Tab: Project

The Metadata tab describes your project's metadata, including a description that outlines the process of metadata creation, contributors to the creation of the metadata, and metadata repositories.

Quick Reference: Project Metadata Tab	Required?
Basic Information: Metadata Status, Dates	Required
Metadata Contacts	Required
Metadata Identifier	Required
Parent Metadata	Required
Metadata Repositories	Required

Basic Information

Metadata Status

Select the appropriate status of the creation of your metadata from the drop down menu. For example, if you have added all of your metadata, select "completed." If you still have metadata to add, select "onGoing."

Dates

Add at least one date is required. Recommended are "creation" (when you first created your metadata) and "lastUpdate" (when you updated metadata after initial publication).

Metadata Contacts

Metadata Contacts are required. Adding a metadata contact will give users a contact point should they have any questions about the metadata.

Role	Contact	Required?
author	See notes below	At least one is required
publisher	default is USFWS	Required
pointOfContact	SA Data Steward	Required

Metadata Contact Notes:

• The author should be an individual and can be a generic data manager.

• In most cases, the author will be the data manager, but could be anyone, including someone outside of FWS (e.g., imported FGDC metadata can list the original author).

• Publisher can also include the FWS region and/or program.

• The point of contact should be a regional or national data steward.

Example Metadata Contacts entry

Metadata Identifier

The Metadata Identifier is automatically populated by mdEditor. The metadata identifier gives each of your projects and products a unique ID and differentiates them from other similar projects and products. Digital Object Identifiers are not needed for Projects.

• If the record was imported from ScienceBase, the Metadata Identifier will be auto-populated with the ScienceBase ID (SBID).

• If the record was created in mdEditor, it will generate a universally unique identifier (UUID).

Once a Metadata Identifier is created in the metadata, do not change it. mdEditor uses the Metadata Identifier to connect records and changing the Metadata Identifier can break those connections. If there are additional identifiers you want to include in your metadata record, include them in Main/Citation/Identifier.

mdEditor Metadata auto-generated identifier entry

Parent Metadata

Parent Metadata tells mdEditor where the project metadata should go when it is published. If using ScienceBase, this is the folder above the project by default.

If you imported the project metadata from ScienceBase originally, this section will be populated already.

If you created the project metadata from scratch in mdEditor, this will be blank. If you provide a default parent ID in Settings (Publishing Settings for ScienceBase), this will be generated for you when when you publish. This is most likely your SA regional project folder. You can enter the parent item SBID directly in your individual metadata record if you wish.

Parent Metadata Required Fields:

Title (Required)

If this is not already populated, you can enter something like "Parent folder."

Identifier and namespace (Required)

Defines the location of the parent folder in ScienceBase.

Identifier	Namespace
ScienceBase identifier for the parent item	scienceBase

The ScienceBase identifier is the alphanumeric string in the item's URL immediately following "item/". For example, 59b97600e4b091459a54d9f3c is the SBID for the item at the URL: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/59b97600e4b091459a54d9f3c

Example ScienceBase Parent Metadata entry

Metadata Repositories

Metadata Repositories indicate where the metadata will be sent upon publishing.

SA Science Catalog

For projects that should be listed in the SA Science Catalog: Select “ScienceCatalog” from the repository list. “SA Science Catalog” should automatically show up as the collection title. If the collection title does not appear, stop and enter the correct information in Settings. Then select the repository for your project. Projects without the correct tag and collection title will not show up in the Science Catalog.

The Metadata Repository and Collection Title must be exactly the same for each of your records with no variations in spelling, spaces, capitalization, etc. Specifying this information in Settings is the best way to ensure the repository information will be consistent across all of your records. It strongly recommended that you do not type these in by hand on individual metadata records.

You should only use the data.gov repository for data products such as datasets, GIS data, etc. Data.gov does not include reports, presentations, or other documents nor are projects sent to data.gov.

Example SA Science Catalog Metadata entry