Data from: Evolution of an application profile: advancing metadata best practices through the Dryad data repository

Dryad is a general-purpose curated repository for data underlying
scholarly publications. Dryad’s metadata framework is supported by a
Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP, hereafter referred to as
application profile). This paper examines the evolution of Dryad’s
application profile, which has been revised over time, in an operational
system, serving day-to-day needs of stakeholders. We model the
relationships between data packages and data files over time, from its
initial implementation in 2007 to its current practice, version 3.2, and
present a crosswalk analysis. Results covering versions 1.0 to 3.0 show an
increase in the number of metadata elements used to describe Dryad’s data
objects in Dryad. Results also confirm that Version 3.0, which envisioned
separate metadata element sets for data package, data files, and
publication metadata, was never fully realized due to constraints in Dryad
system architecture. Version 3.1 subsequently reduced the number of
metadata elements captured by recombining the publication and data package
element sets. This paper documents a real world application profile
implemented in an operational system, noting practical system and
infrastructure constraints. Finally, the analysis presented informs an
ongoing effort to update the application profile to support Dryad's
diverse and expanding community of stakeholders.