What is Metadata?

Welcome to the first of a series of blog posts on metadata and why it is important. The information in these posts is great for authors and editors alike, so please read, share, and send us your thoughts.

These posts are derived from a presentation done by UTP’s Production Manager, Antonia Pop. Antonia spoke on the importance of metadata and discoverability at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association of American University Presses, the CALJ 2014 Annual Meeting as well as at both CALJ Bootcamps for Editors (2013 and 2014). We will be adapting parts of her presentation here to outline how to write great titles, abstracts, and keywords. Stay tuned for more!

What is Metadata?

Congrats! Your article has been accepted! While it may seem as though the publishing process is out of your hands, there is plenty you can do now to ensure that your article is found and read by people in your field of study. In this series we will explain how and why to make your article’s metadata the best that it can be. Before we begin, we’ll explain a bit more about metadata and how search engines work.

The information that makes your article discoverable is called metadata; that is, information flagged electronically as having some particular function – title, keyword, abstract, author, etc. It is the metadata that tells search engines what your article is about. And it is the metadata that helps search engines decide what to display in response to a reader’s search query.

Search engines operate in two main phases. In phase one, before anyone has started a search, they go out and collect information about what articles are available to them. They index the words that appear in the metadata of each article, tabulate how often they appear, and record where exactly they appear (in the title? or in a footnote on page 26?). Phase two is when a reader starts a search and all this information is fed into an algorithm. Here is what happens: the reader inputs search terms, the search engine selects articles from its index, the articles are ranked by the algorithm based on what it finds in metadata fields, and depending on the quality of your metadata, your article either comes up on the screen immediately or lurks somewhere down around article number 5,000.

What you want to do is make sure that your metadata moves your article to the top of the list. If the search term appears frequently, and in important pieces of metadata such as the title, keywords, and abstract, the article will rank high and will appear near the beginning of the list. If the search term appears only in the body of the text, the article will rank lower and appear further down the list.

Authors can influence the discoverability of their articles by giving them rich metadata that will make them rank higher in readers’ searches.

Takeaways:

• Metadata is how search engines know what your article is about.

• Search engines rank articles based on where and how often a search term appears in their metadata.

• Authors can make their articles easier to find by providing rich, descriptive metadata.

Next up – Titles!