Mapping ISO 19115-1 geographic metadata standards to CodeMeta.

Area of Science:

• Geospatial Data Science
• Software Engineering
• Metadata Standards

Background:

• The CodeMeta Project developed a vocabulary for software metadata.
• ISO Technical Committee 211 established metadata standards for geographic data and related resources, including software.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a mapping between ISO metadata elements and the CodeMeta vocabulary.
• To facilitate the use of CodeMeta recommendations by ISO metadata creators and users.
• To address challenges arising from differing metadata typing approaches (hard vs. soft typing) between ISO and CodeMeta.

Main Methods:

• Detailed analysis of the differences between ISO and CodeMeta metadata approaches.
• Development of a proposed mapping linking ISO elements to CodeMeta V2 terms.
• Comparison of the proposed mapping with dialects from twenty-one software repositories, registries, and archives.

Main Results:

• A mapping was proposed, successfully incorporating sixty-four out of sixty-eight CodeMeta V2 terms.
• CodeMeta terms were also mapped to twenty-one software repository dialects, averaging 11.2 mapped terms.
• A significant disparity exists, with ISO and CodeMeta sharing broader use cases (access, use, understanding) compared to repository dialects focused on citation and dependency management.

Conclusions:

• The proposed mapping facilitates interoperability between ISO and CodeMeta metadata standards.
• Addressing broader use cases requires a more comprehensive set of metadata elements than currently found in many software repository dialects.
• Further development is needed to fully integrate the rich metadata capabilities of both ISO and CodeMeta for enhanced software resource management.