Common Format
The repository allows resources and metadata to be accessed, downloaded, or exported from the repository in widely used, preferably non-proprietary, formats.
The USRN Discovery project does not recommend any particular format(s) for content, as the needs of the users of a particular repository cannot be known in advance. Having said this, repositories generally already use well-known formats for most of their content. In the case of publications, the most commonly used formats are PDF or MS Word. While MS Word is a proprietary format, support for it is almost ubiquitous.
There are two aspects when considering 'formats' for metadata.
The first aspect is the serialisation format, which is most easily understood as the "file" format (although metadata is not necessarily conveyed in files). The most commonly used serialisation format for metadata in repositories is XML. This is because the OAI-PMH protocol requires that metadata is made harvestable in this format. Some repositories also make metadata available in some other, common formats including JSON and various types of RDF.
The second aspect is most easily understood as the schema used by the metadata. This dictates the syntax used in metadata records. Perhaps confusingly, OAI-PMH refers to this as the metadata format.
There are many available metadata formats. The USRN Discovery project particularly recommends Rioxx as a well supported and open standard.
In the CORE Dashboard Desirable Characteristics report you can check at a glance if you are exposing common metadata formats correctly.
From the COAR Community Framework for Good Practices in Repositories
| Essential Characteristics | Desired Characteristics |
|---|---|
| 1.1 The repository enables users to apply basic Dublin Core metadata to its records, as well as more granular elements (e.g. to support multilingualism, FAIR-compliance, discipline-based, and regional metadata schemas) 1.2 The repository supports harvesting of metadata using OAI-PMH 1.8 The metadata in the repository are available in human-readable and machine-readable formats 6.5 The metadata and the resources in the repository can be copied or migrated to other systems |
1.13 The repository facilitates the use of controlled vocabularies in its metadata records 1.14 The metadata in the repository are available for download in a standard bibliographic format at no cost to the user 3.2 The landing pages in the repository include metadata required for citation of the resources and are in machine-readable format 3.3 The repository adopts Signposting to support machine access to the resources |