Metadata, Citations and Bibliographies
Susan Veldsman
Director: Scholarly Publishing ASSAf
Workshop:
Writing for a scholarly journal 10 June 2021
Content of Presentation
• Importance of metadata
• Citations and bibliographies
Example – Scholarly Article
Title
Authors
Persistent DOI Keywords
Abstract Files
Date published
Citation
Example – Website
Example – Video in Institutional Repository
Example – Metadata Record at backend of Video
Definition
• Metadata is data that describes the article’s underlying data.
• Meta is a prefix that -- in most information technology usages -- means "an underlying definition or description."
• Metadata summarizes basic information about the article data.
Why?
Having the ability to filter through that metadata makes it much easier for
a human or machines to locate a
specific document.
How does it work?
• contains descriptions of the article’s contents,
• as well as keywords linked to the content.
• This information is usually expressed in the form of meta tags.
• This metadata is often displayed in search results by search engines, making its accuracy and details very important since it can determine whether a user decides to visit the site or not/use the article or not.
How does it work (2)
• Till late 1990’s: Meta tags are often evaluated by search
engines to help decide a web page’s relevance, and were used as the key factor in determining position in a search.
• The increase in search engine optimization towards the end of the 1990s led to many websites “keyword stuffing” their
metadata to trick search engines, making their websites seem more relevant than others.
• Since then search engines have reduced their reliance on metatags, though they are still factored in when indexing pages.
• Many search engines also try to halt web pages’ ability to thwart their system by regularly changing their criteria for
rankings, with Google being notorious for frequently changing their highly-undisclosed ranking algorithms.
How is it created
• Metadata can be created manually, or by automated information processing.
• Manual creation tends to be more accurate,
allowing the user to input any information they feel is relevant or needed to help describe the file.
• Automated metadata creation can be much more elementary, usually only displaying information such as file size, file extension, when the file was created and who created the file
What is a citation?
A citation is a reference to the source of information you used in your research.
• Any time you directly quote, paraphrase or summarize the essential elements of someone else's idea in your work, an in-text citation should follow.
• An in-text citation is a brief notation within the text of your paper or presentation which
refers the reader to a fuller notation, or
• end-of-paper citation, that provides all necessary details about that source of information.
End of paper citations (Bibliography)
• End-of-paper citations, as well as footnotes and endnotes, include full details about a source of information.
• In academic research, your sources will most commonly be articles from scholarly journals, and the citation for an article typically
includes:
•author(s)
•article title
•publication information (journal title, date, volume, issue, pages, etc.)
•Date of publication
•and, for online sources:
• DOI (digital object identifier).
• URL of the information source itself
• Date accessed
• Biomedical research articles may have a PubMed Identifier (PMID)
End of paper citations
• Books, book chapters, films, song lyrics, musical scores, interviews, e-mails, blog entries, art works, lectures, websites and more.
• At the end of your research paper, full citations should be listed in order according to the citation style you are using:
•In MLA style, this list is called a Works Cited page.
•In APA style, it is called a References page.
•In CSE style, it is called a Cited References page.
•And, in Chicago style, there may be both a Notes page and a Bibliography page.
In-Text Citations
In-text citations alert the reader to an idea from an outside source.
• Numerical citations give only a number that corresponds to a footnote, endnote, or reference list entry
• Parenthetical Notes
In MLA and APA styles, in-text citations usually appear as parenthetical notes (sometimes called parenthetical documentation). They are called parenthetical
notes because brief information about the source, usually the author's name, year of publication, and page number, is
enclosed in parentheses as follows:
MLA style: (Smith 263)
APA style: (Smith, 2013, p. 263)
Purpose of citations
• to uphold intellectual honesty (or avoiding plagiarism)
• to attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources,
• to allow the reader to determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the
claimed way, and to help the reader gauge the strength and validity of the material the author has used.
• Make your research discoverable
• if you cite another paper that author should be alerted to it
• opens up the opportunity for co-
authorship/collaboration/network expansion, “return citations”.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/06/08/revisiting-turning-a- critical-eye-on-reference-lists/?informz=1
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
ASSAf Research Repository http://research.assaf.org.za/
B. Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Events I. Other
2021
Writing for a scholarly journal
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), (2021). Writing for a scholarly journal. [Online]
Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11911/211 https://youtu.be/GBQK62_qCLw
Downloaded from ASSAf Research Repository, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
