Annex 3: Best Practice Guide

Good quality metadata is key to understanding whether data is fit for purpose, has value, and is reliable - particularly if it is to inform policy decisions. Further, it is noted that most users search for data through general search engines such as Google. Since data is often not readable by search engines it is generally recognised that searches are performed on the metadata, rather than the data itself. This means that improvements to the metadata content can have the most significant impact on data discovery.

This section aims to provide users with best practice guidance on how to improve their metadata quality to improve data discoverability.

• Title
• Abstract

• Links in records:

  • http rather than https
  • 404s
  • Protocol

This section is currently under development.