some tips on metadata files

[Edward Zukowski]

Dear all,

In order to help our users to upload XML metadata documents please use those tips:

1. You must declare schema in root element like this:

<resource xmlns="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-2.1" 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://datacite.org/schema/kernel-2.1 http://schema.datacite.org/meta/kernel-2.1/metadata.xsd">

2. Note that above uses schema.datacite.org not www.datacite.org. You can use only schemas located at http://schema.datacite.org in order to get your files accepted by MDS. You should NOT use schemas hosted on www.datacite.org even if both seem to be version 2.1.

3. You can use external tools to validate your XML if you have problems uploading and need to diagnose. One of many tools is http://www.validome.org/xml - just paste your XML document into 'source code' area and press Validate. The tool highlights a location of the error.

4. A DOI declared in <identifier> element in your XML file must much DOI of dataset in MDS. DOIs are case insensitive i.e. 10.5072/abc is the same as 10.5072/ABC.

5. Bear in mind that web browsers may not properly display our XML samples. For example if you open:

http://schema.datacite.org/meta/kernel-2.1/example/datacite-metadata-sample-v2.1.xml

with Firefox and compare it with it's source at 

https://github.com/datacite/schema/blob/master/www/meta/kernel-2.1/example/datacite-metadata-sample-v2.1.xml

you will notice that the namespace in root element is missing. The browsers may not show XML properly. The best way to see our examples is to download them to your local drive and open with a proper text editor.

I hope the above tips will help you with uploading metadata.

Best wishes,

Ed