The dataset element is a wrapper for all other elements relating to a single dataset
The party responsible for the creation of the metadata document
This is the only identifier issued by the IPT for the metadata document; it is a UUID
The creator is the person who created the resource (not necessarily the author of this metadata about the resource).
This is the person or institution to contact with questions about the use, interpretation of a dataset.
The full name of the organization that is associated with the resource. This field is intended to describe which institution or overall organization is associated with the resource being described.
This field is intended to be used instead of a particular person or full organization name. If the associated person who holds the role changes frequently, then Position Name would be used for consistency. E.g., GBIF Data Manager.
A party associated with the resource. Parties have particular roles.
The date on which the resource was published
The language in which the resource (not the metadata document) is written
A brief overview describing the dataset
A wrapper element for the keyword and keywordThesaurus elements
This field names a keyword or key phrase that concisely describes the resource or is related to the resource. Each keyword field should contain one and only one keyword
The name of the official keyword thesaurus from which keyword was derived
Any information that is not characterized by the other resource metadata fields
Contain a rights management statement for the resource, or reference a service providing such information
Describes the extent of the coverage of the resource in terms of its spatial extent, temporal extent, and taxonomic extent
A container for spatial information about a resource; allows a bounding box for the overall coverage (in lat long), and also allows description of arbitrary polygons with exclusions.
A short text description of a dataset's geographic areal domain. A text description is especially important to provide a geographic setting when the extent of the dataset cannot be well described by the "boundingCoordinates".
Bounding Coordinates are the four margins (N, S, E, W) of a bounding box, or when considered in lat-lon pairs, the corners of the box.
The westBoundingCoordinate field defines the longitude of the western-most point of the bounding box that is being described.
The eastBoundingCoordinate field defines the longitude of the eastern-most point of the bounding box that is being described.
The northBoundingCoordinate field defines the latitude of the northern-most point of the bounding box that is being described.
The southBoundingCoordinate field defines the latitude of the southern-most point of the bounding box that is being described.
This field specifies temporal coverage, and allows coverages to be a single point in time, multiple points in time, or a range of dates.
The 'RangeOfDates' field is intended to be used for describing a range of dates and/or times. It may be used multiple times to document multiple date ranges. It allows for two 'singleDateTime' fields, the first to be used as the beginning dateTime, and the second to be used as the ending dateTime of the range.
A single time stamp signifying the beginning of some time period
A single time stamp signifying the end of some time period
The SingleDateTime field is intended to describe a single date and time for an event
Taxonomic Coverage is a container for taxonomic information about a resource. It includes a list of species names (or higher level ranks) from one or more classification systems.
A general description of the range of taxa addressed in the data set or collection
Information about the range of taxa addressed in the dataset or collection
The name of the taxonomic rank for which the Taxon rank value is provided, e.g., Phylum, Class, Genus, Species
The name representing the taxonomic rank of the taxon being described
Applicable common names; these common names may be general descriptions of a group of organisms if appropriate, e.g., invertebrates, waterfowl
A description of the purpose of the resource/dataset
The methods field documents scientific methods used in the collection of this dataset. It includes information on items such as tools, instrument calibration and software.
The methodStep field allows for repeated sets of elements that document a series of procedures followed to produce a data object. These include text descriptions of the procedures, relevant literature, software, instrumentation, source data and any quality control measures taken.
The qualityControl field provides a location for the description of actions taken to either control or assess the quality of data resulting from the associated method step.
Description of sampling procedures including the geographic, temporal and taxonomic coverage of the study.
The field studyExtent represents both a specific sampling area and the sampling frequency (temporal boundaries, frequency of occurrence). The geographic studyExtent is usually a surrogate (representative area of) for the larger area documented in the "studyAreaDescription".
The samplingDescription field allows for a text-based/human readable description of the sampling procedures used in the research project. The content of this element would be similar to a description of sampling procedures found in the methods section of a journal article.
The project field contains information on the project in which this dataset was collected. It includes information such as project personnel, funding, study area, project design and related projects.
The Personnel field extends ResponsibleParty with role information and is used to document people involved in a research project by providing contact information and their role in the project.
The funding field is used to provide information about funding sources for the project such as: grant and contract numbers; names and addresses of funding sources.
The studyAreaDescription field documents the physical area associated with the research project. It can include descriptions of the geographic, temporal, and taxonomic coverage of the research location and descriptions of domains (themes) of interest such as climate, geology, soils or disturbances.
The field designDescription contains general textual descriptions of research design. It can include detailed accounts of goals, motivations, theory, hypotheses, strategy, statistical design, and actual work.
The descriptor field is used to document domains (themes) of interest such as climate, geology, soils or disturbances.
The descriptorValue field contains a general description, either thematic or geographic, of the study area.
A flexible field for including any other relevant metadata that pertains to the resource being described. This field allows EML to be extensible in that any XML-based metadata can be included in this element.
This element contains the additional metadata to be included in the document. This element should be used for extending EML to include metadata that is not already available in another part of the EML specification.
A block of additional metadata used for some special GBIF purposes and crossmapping to other schemas like the TDWG Natural Collection Data (NCD) schema
The date the metadata document was created or modified.
A single citation for use when citing the dataset
A list of citations that form a bibliography on literature related / used in the dataset
A container element for all of the elements that let you describe the internal/external characteristics and distribution of a data object (e.g., dataObject, dataFormat, distribution) .
URL of the logo associated with a resource
A container element for other elements associated with collections (e.g., collectionIdentifier, collectionName).
Identifier for the parent collection for this sub-collection. Enables a hierarchy of collections and sub collections to be built.
The URI (LSID or URL) of the collection. In RDF, used as URI of the collection resource.
Official name of the Collection in the local language
Text description of the time period during which the collection was assembled e.g. "Victorian", or "1922 - 1932", or "c. 1750".
Picklist keyword indicating the process or technique used to prevent physical deterioration of non-living collections. Expected to contain a value from the GBIF Specimen Preservation Method vocabulary
Time period during which biological material was alive. (for palaeontological collections)
Pointer to previous version of the document
A single literature citation with an optional identifier
A URI, DOI or other persistent identifier for the citation
A quantitative descriptor (number of specimens, samples or batches).
A general description of the unit of curation, e.g., 'jar containing plankton sample';
The exact number of units within the collection
A measure of the uncertainty (+ or -) x associated with the jgtiUnits value
A range of numbers (x to x), with the lower value representing an exact number, when the higher value is omitted.
The lower value in a range of numbers. Use to represent an exact number by omitting the "endRange" value.
The upper value in a range of numbers.
The name of the data object. This often is the filename of a file in a file system or that is accessible on the network.
This element contains the name of the character encoding. This is typically ASCII or UTF-8, or one of the other common encodings.
This is a container element for other elements which describe the internal physical characteristics of the data object.
Information about a non-text or proprietary formatted object.
Name of the format of the data object, e.g., ESRI Shapefile.
Version of the format of the data object
The 'title' field provides a description of the resource that is being documented that is long enough to differentiate it from other similar resources. Multiple titles may be provided, particularly when trying to express the title in more than one language (use the "xml:lang" attribute to indicate the language if not English/en).
The individualName field contains subfields so that a person's name can be broken down into parts.
The given name field can be used for first name of the individual associated with the resource, or for any other names that are not intended to be alphabetized, (as appropriate).
The surname field is used for the last name of the individual associated with the resource. This is typically the family name of an individual, for example, the name by which s/he is referred to in citations.
The address field is a container for multiple subfields that describe the physical or electronic address of the responsible party for a resource.
The delivery point field is used for the physical address for postal communication, e.g., GBIF Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15
The city field is used for the city name of the contact associated with a particular resource.
The administrative area field is the equivalent of a 'state' in the U.S., or Province in Canada. This field is intended to accommodate the many types of international administrative areas.
The postal code is equivalent to a U.S. zip code, or the number used for routing to an international address.
The country field is used for the name of the contact's country.
The phone field describes information about the responsible party's telephone, be it a voice phone, fax.
The electronic mail address is the email address for the party. It is intended to be an Internet SMTP email address, which should consist of a username followed by the @ symbol, followed by the email server domain name address.
A link to associated online information, usually a web site. When the party represents an organization, this is the URL to a website or other online information about the organization. If the party is an individual, it might be their personal web site or other related online information about the party.
Use this field to describe the role the party played with respect to the resource. Some potential roles include technician, reviewer, principal investigator, and many others.
The "paragraph" element allows for text blocks to be included in EML.
This element provides information on how the resource is distributed. When used at the resource level, this element can provide only general information, but elements for describing connections to online systems are provided.
This element contains information for accessing the resource online represented as a URL connection
The URL of the resource that is available online.
The calendar date field is used to express a date, giving the year, month, and day. The format should be one that complies with the International Standards Organization's standard 8601. The recommended format for EML is YYYY-MM-DD, where Y is the four digit year, M is the two digit month code (01 - 12, where January = 01), and D is the two digit day of the month (01 - 31). This field can also be used to enter just the year portion of a date.
The field Description contains general textual descriptions.
A type allowing a year or date value.
This type is the union of the built-in types for year and date.
Example: 1999, or 2001-03-15
Non Empty String Type.
This type specifies a content pattern for all elements
that are required by EML to ensure that there is actual content (i.e.,
not just whitespace). The pattern described can be interpreted as
"at least one non-whitespace character, followed
by any number of whitespace plus not-whitespace characters. "
Leading and/or trailing whitespace is allowed, and whitespace
may include carriage returns and newlines.