Add Metadata to Your OSF Project
Once you have created an OSF Project, you can enhance the information OSF stores and shares about the project and its associated files through the creation of additional metadata. This enhanced information will increase the likelihood of your project being found and understood. Adding information about funding agency may also help you in assuring compliance with funder mandates.
- Finding Project Metadata
- Editing Basic Metadata
- Resource Information Metadata
- Funding /Support Metadata
- Tags
Finding Project Metadata
To add metadata to your project, begin by clicking on the Metadata tab in the project navigation menu:
The "Metadata" page will open for your project. The existing metadata that you entered when creating your project will be listed (description, contributors, and tags). The title cannot be edited from this page, but can be changed on your project's home page.
Editing Basic Metadata
You can choose to edit any of these fields by clicking the pencil icon next to the section:
After adjusting or adding metadata, click the blue Save button to enter your changes.
When editing contributors to the project, clicking on the pencil icon will take you to the "Contributors" tab. See the help guide on Collaborating on Projects for more information on adjusting contributors and their permission levels.
To return to the metadata editing page, click the Metadata link in the navigation menu again.
Resource Information Metadata
Several fields on the metadata editing page do not appear during the project creation process. These fields will initially be blank, but you can add information by again clicking the pencil icon.
The first new section is related to Resource Information. These fields describe the type of materials you are storing and the language. At this stage we are describing the project as a whole, not specific files (metadata for those can be added next).
Resource type presents you with a dropdown list of choices provided by the DataCite schema. This information is critical when creating a DOI for your project. You should select the choice that most closely adheres to your project. If your project primarily contains a dataset for example, you can select dataset. If your project contains a mix of different materials, you can select collection. Later on, you can add more specific resource types to individual files. A full list of the available types and their definitions is found in this guide.
Resource language asks for a predominant language for materials in your collection. These choices are again selected from a dropdown list. Since this list is longer, you may want to start to type in the language name to find it more quickly.
Once the type and language have been added, click the blue Save button to record your changes.
Funding/Support Metadata
The next section presents Funding or Support Information. If your project was the recipient of funding from an organization in the Crossref Funder Registry you can search for and add that funder name to your project. This will add both the funder name and their ID number to your metadata enabling that funder to find your project more easily.
Additional information about the award title, a URI where more information can be found and an award number can also be added.
If your project is the recipient of funding from more than one body, click the green Add another button to add more funders. Once all funding information has been added, click the blue Save button to record your changes.
Tags
Tags are brief descriptive keywords that can be added to project to aid in discoverability and description. Tags can be added on the main project home page or on the metadata editing screen. Tags appear at the bottom of the metadata page. Click on the text at the bottom that says Add a tag to enhance discoverability.
Once you have finished typing the tag you want to add, hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard to record the change.
Tags will then appear on the home page of the project in the Tags section
Now that you have added metadata to your OSF Project, you can move on to add more specific metadata to important files. See our help guide to Add Metadata to an OSF Files.
