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Metadata Standards Index

Biodiversity & Environment

12 standards in this subject area

Access to Biological Collection Data

(ABCD)

An XML schema for exchanging specimen and observation data from biological collections.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Updated June 13, 2007

AGROVOC

Over 42,000 concepts spanning agriculture, fisheries, and food science in more than 42 languages.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Est. 1980

Audiovisual Core Multimedia Resources Metadata Schema

(AC)

Metadata vocabularies for describing biodiversity-related multimedia resources and collections.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Updated February 24, 2023

Bioschemas

Extends Schema.org with usage profiles for genes, proteins, datasets, and other life science resources.

Application Profile active Bioschemas Community Est. 2015

Darwin Core

(DwC)

A shared vocabulary for recording and exchanging biodiversity observations, specimens, and taxa.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) Updated September 18, 2023

Ecological Metadata Language

(EML)

A comprehensive XML vocabulary for documenting ecological and environmental research datasets.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Updated August 7, 2019

Gene Ontology

(GO)

The most widely used ontology for annotating gene function across all living species.

Ontology active Gene Ontology Consortium Est. 1998

Generic Earth Observation Metadata Standard

(GEOMS)

Defines self-describing metadata templates for Earth observation validation data from ground instruments.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / ESA Updated December 1, 2021

ISA-Tab

(ISA)

Structures multi-omics experiment metadata into investigation, study, and assay layers.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active ISA Commons Est. 2008

ISO 19115 Geographic Information -- Metadata

(ISO 19115)

The foundational international schema for describing geographic datasets and spatial services.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Updated January 1, 2020

NCBI Taxonomy Database

The authoritative classification of over 2.5 million organisms across all NCBI sequence databases.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Est. 1991

Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology Foundry

(OBO Foundry)

A collaborative framework of interoperable ontologies for the biological and biomedical sciences.

Technical Specification active OBO Foundry Est. 2007