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Metadata

This page discusses how to configure metadata describing your data set as part of a qube-config.json file.

For a detailed look at metadata configuration options, see the Reference table at the bottom of this page.

Tip

Experience of writing basic JSON documents is assumed throughout this document. See this tutorial from DigitalOcean for an introduction to writing JSON.

Configuration

All csvcubed outputs contain metadata which makes it easier to discover data publications. We use definitions from established vocabularies to enable you to contribute faster to the web of data.

The following is an example of a metadata section from a qube-config.json about Eurovision performances by Sweden, that uses all possible metadata fields.

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{
    "$schema": "https://purl.org/csv-cubed/qube-config/v1",
    "title": "Sweden at Eurovision",
    "summary": "List of Swedish entries to the Eurovision Song Contest since 1958.",
    "description": "Sweden has been competing in Eurovision since 1958, with an enviable track record of wins. This dataset covers all contests since 1958, their artists, the song names, language (if mono-lingual), and some observations covering points in final, rank in final, and number of artists on stage. Data originally sourced from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sweden_in_the_Eurovision_Song_Contest&oldid=1081060799 and https://sixonstage.com/",
    "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "public_contact_point_uri": "mailto:swedensongscontact@example.com",
    "themes": ["http://example.com/themes/sweden-eurovision"],
    "publisher": "https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-national-statistics",
    "creator": "https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-national-statistics",
    "dataset_issued": "2022-04-08T00:00:00Z",
    "dataset_modified": "2022-04-08T00:00:00Z",
    "keywords": [
        "Eurovision",
        "Song Contest",
        "Sweden",
        "European Broadcasting Union"
    ]
}

Note how some field contents must be given in square brackets [] as a list, such as keywords or themes.

You do not have to provide all fields for the metadata to be valid, but you should provide a $schema so that csvcubed can recognise the file.

Reference

field name description default value
title The title of the cube A capital case version of the CSV file name
description A description of the contents of the cube; this field supports the markdown format none
summary A summary of the data set none
publisher A link to the publisher of the cube none
creator A link to the creator of the cube none
themes A list of themes that describe the focus of the data none
keywords A list or a single string of the keywords(s) covered by the data (i.e. ["trade", "energy", "imports"]) none
dataset_issued Date that the data set was initially published in ISO 8601 format, e.g. 2022-03-31 or 2022-03-31T12:54:30Z none
dataset_modified Date that the data set was last modified in ISO 8601 format, e.g. 2022-03-31 or 2022-03-31T12:54:30Z none
license URI representing the copyright license that applies to this cube none
public_contact_point_uri URI providing a public contact point for discussion of the data set, e.g. mailto:contact.point@example.com none

See the describing your CSV quick start for a practical guide on configuring metadata.