Standards and Specifications

Information about technical, organisational, and procedural standards used in digital curation and data preservation initiatives.
Visit our Disciplinary Metadata Standards page for information about metadata standards, including profiles, tools to implement the standards, and use cases of data repositories currently implementing them.
- DOI
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System is for identifying content objects in the digital environment.
- Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)
The METS schema is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library.
- Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)
OAI-PMH provides a standard way for a data repository to expose metadata to third party indexing engines.
- Open Data Protocol (OData)
The OData Protocol is an application-level protocol for interacting with data via RESTful web services.
- SKOS Core
The Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) Core provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other types of controlled vocabulary.
- Standard Archive Format for Europe (SAFE)
SAFE has been designed to act as a common format for archiving and conveying data within European Space Agency (ESA) Earth observation archiving facilities.
- XML Formatted Data Unit (XFDU)
XFDU defines the CCSDS Recommended Standard for the packaging of data and metadata, including software, into a single package (e.g., file or message) to facilitate information transfer and archiving.
- XMP
Adobe's Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a labeling technology that metadata about a file to be embedded into the file itself.
- Home
- Digital curation
- About us
- News
- Events
- Resources
- Briefing Papers
- Introduction to Curation
- Annotation
- Appraisal and Selection
- Curating Emails
- Curating e-Science Data
- Curating Geospatial Data
- Data Accreditation
- Data Citation and Linking
- Data Protection
- Database Archiving
- Digital Repositories
- Freedom of Information
- Genre Classification
- Interoperability
- Persistent Identifiers
- Trust Through Self Assessment
- Using OAIS for Curation
- Web 2.0
- What is Digital Curation?
- Common Directions in Research Data Policy
- 5 Steps to Research Data Readiness
- Citizen Science
- Making the Case for RDM
- Legal Watch Papers
- Standards Watch Papers
- Technology Watch Papers
- Introduction to Curation
- How-to Guides & Checklists
- Appraise & Select Research Data for Curation
- Cite Datasets and Link to Publications
- Develop RDM Services
- Develop a DMP
- Discover Requirements
- Five Steps to Decide What Data to Keep
- Five Things You Need to Know About RDM and the Law
- License Research Data
- Track Data Impact with Metrics
- Using RISE
- Where to keep research data
- Write a Lay Summary
- Developing RDM Services
- Reviewing research data platform capabilities at CISER
- Using EPrints to Build a Repository for UEL
- Assigning DOIs at Bristol
- DMPs in the Arts and Humanities
- Improving RDM at Monash
- Improving Research Visibility
- Increasing Participation in Training
- RDM Training for Librarians
- RDM strategy: moving from plans to action
- Storing and Sharing Data in Hull
- Curation Lifecycle Model
- Curation Reference Manual
- Peer review
- Editorial Board
- Completed chapters
- Appraisal and Selection
- Archival Metadata
- Archiving Web Resources
- Automated Metadata Generation
- Curating Emails
- File Formats
- Investment in an Intangible Asset
- Learning Object Metadata
- Metadata
- Ontologies
- Open Source for Digital Curation
- Preservation Metadata
- Preservation Scenarios for Projects Producing Digital Resources
- Preservation Strategies
- Principles for Enabling Access to Engineering Design Information Through Life
- Scientific Metadata
- The Role of Microfilm in Digital Preservation
- Chapters in production
- Policy and legal
- Data Management Plans
- Tools
- Case studies
- Repository audit and assessment
- Standards
- Publications and presentations
- Roles
- Curation journals
- Informatics research
- External resources
- Online Store
- Briefing Papers
- Training
- Projects
- Community
- Tailored support