Metadata helps future users find and understand published datasets. Please contact the Library to discuss metadata standards in your field.  

Readme files and codebooks 

A common way to provide metadata to your research dataset is through a readme file and/or a codebook.

Recommended descriptive elements for your dataset

When publishing data in a repository, we recommend that you provide the following descriptive elements:

  • Title of the dataset (unique from associated articles)

  • Author (the person/people who collected the data)

  • Institution (Montana State University)

  • Date last modified

  • Version, if applicable

  • Short description of the dataset

  • Citation and DOI for related publication(s), if applicable

  • Licensing information