Did you know that there’s a way to increase the ability for others to find your work? When you publish to an open access repository your work is there for people to find, but in order for them to find it, it has to be discoverable. To increase the odds that someone who is interested can find it, you should add more relevant metadata.
What’s metadata? Generally speaking, it’s data about data. In this case it’s information attached to your work that describes it. Metadata includes things like the title, abstract or description, and the authors and/or contributors names. Another very important part of metadata is describing your work with subject headings and keywords. Some of this information is taken from our guide “How do I make my content findable? Metadata!” Check there for a more detailed explanation.
Note: I’m not only the Product Manager of Knowledge Commons, I’m also a librarian. Working with the metadata librarians at the Michigan State University Library System we ensure that we provide a strong collection of controlled vocabularies to help users find consistent terminology to describe their work.
What’s a “controlled vocabulary”? I’m glad you asked. From Wikipedia:
Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri taxonomies and other knowledge organization systems.
In other words, they are a set of defined words that you can use to ensure that terms are consistent between entries into a repository or other system.
In the past metadata was largely the responsibility of publishers and librarians. Publishers when a book was published, using BISAC (Book Industry Study Group) codes. Librarians use any number of subject heading controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST). The Commons uses FAST and other taxonomies to help users find subject information to ensure that their work is findable by search engines and other aggregators. These can help users who search for specific terms find your work easier.
Keywords, formerly known as tags, are user-defined terms to aid in searching. Those working in new disciplines or lines of study may find that terms used in their work have not yet made it into the subject heading taxonomies, or you may want to highlight a name or other proper noun that’s the focus of the work. The Commons offers users the ability to create their own tags to increase the ability for the work to be found by those who may be interested.
If you have deposited your work in the past into CORE, our former repository, and you didn’t provide subjects or keywords you have the chance now to go in and edit those deposits. KCWorks allows users to edit their own metadata and even create new versions of their work to provide for corrections or updates. If you’re just starting out, take the time to find a few subjects and keywords as part of the deposit process. It will help your audience find your work, and it’s great for thinking about how your work fits into the larger community.