Metadata for research data discovery and management

Requirements for sharing research data have increased in recent years, partly in response to the open science agenda and partly as a means to make better use of data generated using public money. Research funders increased their expectations of researchers in relation to research data sharing, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) was the first Research Council to put the onus on institutions to provide support for this.
In response to the EPSRC expectations, the University of Bath developed a Research Data Archive for researchers to archive and share their data. This was developed using the institutional repository software, EPrints. EPrints has a flexible approach to metadata, so developing a metadata schema for use in the Archive was a significant task. This article explains the approach taken, how it was implemented and evaluates its effectiveness.