Using keywords well

The digital object identifiers (DOIs) produced by GEOFON contain much metadata about each dataset. This includes subjects and keywords. These appear as <subject> elements in the DataCite XML for the data set.

Good keywords promote discovery of your data by other researchers. As we develop, these will be used to support filtering of datasets that we host.

PI contributions

PIs are encouraged to use this capability by providing their own keywords relevant to particular datasets.

Controlled vocabularies

A controlled vocabulary is a selected list of words or phrases ("terms") with their definitions. Using such a vocabulary allows tagging of datasets to support finding them in convenient ways.

GEOFON defaults

Currently (2023) we generally assign the following subjects to most datasets:

This is not exhaustive, and we are happy to make changes after discussion with PIs. We may make changes to these keywords after data set publication to better fit in with existing keyword and subject vocabularies.

Seismic data controlled vocabulary

We are working with other groups to develop a vocabulary of terms specific to the needs of seismology.

Other sources of standard terms