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📋 Best Practices — Completing the Zenodo Metadata Form

Overview

This is the Best Practices — Completing the Zenodo Metadata Form guide, part of GEMs → Guides in the A-LIFE RDM collection.

This document provides best practices for completing the metadata fields in Zenodo. Fields are grouped into three categories:

Supporting materials: Zenodo - Metadata and Documentation, Essentials - Licences, Essentials - PIDs
Authors: Irene Martorelli, Brett Olivier — Last modification: 2026-02-20 — Version: 0.6.0

⭐ Basic Information

Basic Information

Definition: Minimum description of the data package — visible once published.
Type: Mandatory — complete all fields.

Digital Object Identifier — Mandatory

  • Reserve a DOI before publishing by clicking Get a DOI now! — the DOI is registered only when the record is published.
  • If you select Yes, do not provide a DOI linked to a journal article. Instead, add the article DOI in the Related works field.

Resource Type — Mandatory

  • Select Dataset for data files (e.g. CSV, XLS) and for data that includes scripts.
  • Select Software when publishing a software package or a specific version of a code repository.

Title — Mandatory

  • Provide a title that reflects the content of the data. The title is used in citations and for discovery.
  • Keep it concise. Use Add additional title/subtitle for very long titles.
  • A good format for datasets: "Dataset for [Title of your article]"
  • Avoid special characters (e.g. # % & @).

Publication Date — Mandatory

  • Defaults to the date the draft was created. Can be modified.
  • Use ISO format: YYYY-MM-DD.

Creator — Mandatory

  • A Creator is an author of the dataset and is included in the citation.
  • Search by ORCID to auto-populate name and affiliation.
  • It is highly recommended to provide an ORCID and a ROR affiliation for each Creator. The affiliation field is auto-completed from the ROR database.

Description — Mandatory

  • Provide a paragraph or short summary describing your dataset — it appears under the title once published.
  • Do not copy the abstract of your article — the Description should specifically describe the dataset.
  • The Description is not a substitute for a README file: the Description gives a general summary; the README describes the content of individual files.

A good example

👉 See a good Description example from an A-LIFE researcher: Zenodo dataset.

Licence — Mandatory

  • A copyright statement describing ownership of the uploaded resource. By default: Copyright © (2025) The Authors.

Recommended Information

Definition: Not strictly required to publish, but highly recommended for a complete and well-documented record.
Type: Recommended

Contributors — Optional

  • Add Contributors in the same way as Creators — they are not included in the citation.
  • Do not add a person as a Contributor if they are already listed as a Creator.
  • Assign a Role (e.g. Supervisor, Contact person, Sponsor) — equivalent to someone you would include in manuscript Acknowledgements.
  • Keywords are free-form text; Subjects are from controlled vocabularies (e.g. Medical Subject Headings — MeSH).
  • Press Enter or click Add after each term to create separate tags — do not enter all terms as one string.
  • Check if your term is already in the European Science Vocabulary (EuroSciVoc) — shown as EuroSciVoc in the dropdown.
zenodo-keywords
Selecting keywords and subjects from standard vocabularies

Languages — Optional

  • More than one language can be selected.

Dates — Optional

  • Add specific date types beyond the publication date (e.g. submission or acceptance dates for preprints).
  • Use ISO format: YYYY-MM-DD.
  • For a first publication, use 1.0.0.
  • Increment the version number for each subsequent update (e.g. 1.1.0 follows 1.0.0).

Semantic versioning

👉 See Introduction to semantic versioning for guidance on versioning datasets and software.

Publisher — Optional

  • The Publisher appears in the citation. Zenodo is the default and will be visible in your record's citation. You may replace it with your institution's name.

ℹ Other Information

Other Information

Definition: Additional contextual information. Not mandatory, but recommended if the information exists.
Type: Optional

  • Provide funding information for awards and grants associated with your research.
  • Standard award/grant: click + Add.
  • Custom award/grant: click + Add Custom — the funder must be registered in ROR.
  • More than one funding source can be added.
  • Use this field to cross-link your dataset with related publications, datasets, or other resources.
  • Mandatory sub-fields: Relation type, Identifier, and Scheme.
  • The most common relation type for datasets is Is Supplement To (links your dataset to a related article).
  • See the full list of DataCite Relation Types.

References — Optional

  • Prefer using Related works to cross-link resources rather than this field.

Software — Optional

  • Relevant for Software resource types. Sub-fields: Repository URL, Programming language, and Repository status (e.g. Active).

Using GitHub with Zenodo?

👉 Zenodo integrates with GitHub to automatically archive repository versions. See Referencing content on GitHub and Zenodo GitHub and Software.

Publishing information — Optional

  • Relevant for manuscripts uploaded to Zenodo. Fields include Journal, Book, etc.

Conference — Optional

  • Relevant for conference-related outputs (posters, presentations). Include the conference name and location.

Domain specific fields — Optional

  • Include domain-specific metadata where applicable.

What next?

Metadata complete! Continue to Publishing in Zenodo to publish your dataset.

  1. GitHub Docs — Referencing and citing content: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content ↩

  2. Zenodo Documentation — GitHub and Software: https://help.zenodo.org/docs/github/ ↩