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. The most important step to better metadata is due diligence.
For best results, OJS journals should:
- Regularly review journal-level metadata and settings. Make sure to check all your settings but, in particular, review:
- Administration > Site Settings > Languages
- Settings > Journal > Masthead and Sections
- Settings > Workflow > Metadata
- Provide as much information about your journal as you can in the About the Journal section.
- Review About the Journal regularly to keep it up to date.
- Remember that metadata describes the articles in your publication. It is not a way to manipulate the design or layout of your journal website.
- Avoid stylistic decisions in journal metadata.
- Use custom themes instead.
- Be consistent across your publication and make sure your metadata matches your published PDFs.
- Only use one language per metadata field.
- Don’t paste metadata directly from word processing software like Microsoft Word.
- Instead, clear formatting using Notepad (Windows) or pasting without formatting with Option+Command+Shift+V (Mac).
- Review all metadata for articles prior to publication. Once your material is published, any indexing or harvesting services may start pulling your metadata before you have time to make changes.
- “Measure twice, cut once.”
