Policies / Metadata Standards | WBU Scholarly Repository

1. Purpose of Metadata Standards

Consistent, high-quality metadata is essential for the effective discovery, citation, reuse, and long-term preservation of scholarly works. The WBU Scholarly Repository applies recognised international metadata standards to all deposited records to ensure maximum interoperability with global academic databases, search engines, and library cataloguing systems.

2. Core Metadata Schema: Dublin Core

The Repository implements the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (ISO 15836) as its foundational descriptive metadata standard. All records include, at a minimum, the following Dublin Core elements:

dc:title — Full title of the work as it appears on the submission
dc:creator — Author(s) in the format: Surname, Given Name
dc:subject — Keywords and subject classifications
dc:description — Structured abstract of the work
dc:publisher — World Bridge University
dc:date — Date of publication or deposit in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD)
dc:type — Document type (Thesis, Dissertation, Article, etc.)
dc:format — File format (application/pdf)
dc:identifier — Persistent identifier (DOI or handle)
dc:language — Language code per ISO 639-1 (e.g., "en" for English)
dc:rights — Licence statement and rights declaration

3. Scholar Indexing Metadata (Highwire Press Tags)

To ensure effective indexing by Google Scholar and other academic search engines, all published article records include the following citation metadata tags embedded in the page's HTML:

citation_title — Title of the work
citation_author — Author name(s)
citation_publication_date — Publication date in YYYY/MM/DD format
citation_pdf_url — Direct, publicly accessible URL to the full-text PDF
citation_abstract — Structured abstract text
citation_keywords — Semicolon-separated subject keywords
citation_doi — Digital Object Identifier, where assigned
citation_institution — World Bridge University
citation_language — Language code
citation_author_orcid — Author ORCID iD, where provided

4. Structured Data (Schema.org)

Each article record includes JSON-LD structured data conforming to the schema.org/ScholarlyArticle vocabulary. This enables rich indexing by general-purpose search engines and facilitates knowledge graph integration. Key properties include: name, author, publisher, datePublished, description, keywords, encoding (PDF), identifier (DOI), isAccessibleForFree, and license.

5. Persistent Identifiers

The Repository assigns a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to all accepted and published works at the point of acceptance. DOIs follow the format: 10.5281/wbu.[year].[sequence]. DOIs provide stable, globally resolvable persistent links that remain valid independent of any changes to the Repository's URL structure.

Researchers are also encouraged to register and associate their ORCID iD with their Repository profile to ensure unambiguous author identification across the scholarly record.

6. Subject Classification

Authors are required to provide a minimum of three and a maximum of ten subject keywords at the time of deposit. Keywords should be drawn, where possible, from recognised controlled vocabulary sources such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for health sciences, or the UNESCO Thesaurus for interdisciplinary works. The use of discipline-specific terminology is encouraged.

7. OAI-PMH Compliance

The Repository supports the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), enabling automated metadata harvesting by external aggregators, library catalogues, and academic databases. Metadata exposed via OAI-PMH is compliant with the Dublin Core schema and is updated on a continuous basis as new records are published.

8. Metadata Quality Assurance

All metadata submitted by depositors is reviewed by the Repository Administrator prior to publication. Records failing to meet the minimum quality threshold will be returned to the depositor with specific guidance on required corrections. The Repository reserves the right to enhance, correct, or standardise metadata in the interest of record quality and system-wide consistency.