dublincore: Add or Retrieve Dublin Core Metadata
In dataset: Create Data Frames for Exchange and Reuse

as_dublincore

R Documentation

Add or Retrieve Dublin Core Metadata

Description

Adds or retrieves metadata conforming to the Dublin Core Metadata Terms standard, enabling consistent and structured citation and retrieval of R dataset objects.

is.dublincore() checks whether an object inherits from the "dublincore" class.

Usage

as_dublincore(x, type = "bibentry", ...)

dublincore(
  title,
  creator,
  contributor = NULL,
  year = NULL,
  publisher = NULL,
  identifier = NULL,
  subject = NULL,
  type = "DCMITYPE:Dataset",
  dataset_date = NULL,
  language = NULL,
  relation = NULL,
  dataset_format = "application/r-rds",
  rights = NULL,
  datasource = NULL,
  description = NULL,
  coverage = NULL
)

is.dublincore(x)

## S3 method for class 'dublincore'
print(x, ...)

Arguments

`x`	An object to test.
`type`	The resource type. For datasets, use `"Dataset"`. See DCMI Type Vocabulary.
`...`	Additional metadata fields.
`title`	A name given to the resource. See `dataset_title()`.
`creator`	One or more `utils::person()` objects representing the creator(s). See `creator()`.
`contributor`	Additional contributors (`utils::person()`) with optional roles. See `contributor()`.
`year`	An explicit publication year. If omitted, inferred from `dataset_date`.
`publisher`	A character or `utils::person()` indicating the publishing entity. See `publisher()`.
`identifier`	A unique persistent identifier (e.g., DOI). See `identifier()`.
`subject`	A keyword or controlled vocabulary term. See `subject()` and `subject_create()`.
`dataset_date`	A publication or release date (`Date`, `POSIXct`, or character in `YYYY`, `YYYY-MM-DD`, or ISO format).
`language`	ISO 639-1 language code. See `language()`.
`relation`	A related resource (e.g., version, paper, or parent dataset). Currently only supports an URI, for example, `"https:://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.dataset"`.
`dataset_format`	The technical format of the dataset (e.g., MIME type). See `dataset_format()`.
`rights`	A string describing intellectual property or usage rights. Use a URI like `"https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/"`.
`datasource`	A URL or label for the original source of the dataset.
`description`	A free-text summary of the dataset. See `description()`.
`coverage`	Geographic or temporal extent (spatial/temporal coverage).

Details

The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES) is a standardized vocabulary for describing digital and physical resources. It includes 15 core fields and is formally standardized as ISO 15836, IETF RFC 5013, and ANSI/NISO Z39.85.

This function constructs a utils::bibentry() object extended with DCMI terms and is compatible with dataset_df() objects. The resulting metadata can be used for semantic documentation and machine-readable citation.

For compatibility with utils::bibentry(), the dataset_date parameter is automatically used to derive both publication_date and year fields.

Value

A bibentry object extended with class "bibrecord", storing structured Dublin Core metadata. Use as_dublincore() to extract the metadata in list, tabular, or RDF form.

A logical value: TRUE if x is a Dublin Core metadata record (i.e., inherits from "dublincore"), otherwise FALSE.

Source

DCMI Metadata Terms

Examples

orange_bibentry <- dublincore(
  title = "Growth of Orange Trees",
  creator = c(
    person(
      given = "N.R.",
      family = "Draper",
      role = "cre",
      comment = c(VIAF = "http://viaf.org/viaf/84585260")
    ),
    person(given = "H", family = "Smith", role = "cre")
  ),
  contributor = person(given = "Antal", family = "Daniel", role = "dtm"),
  publisher = "Wiley",
  datasource = "https://isbnsearch.org/isbn/9780471170822",
  dataset_date = 1998,
  identifier = "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14917851",
  language = "en",
  description = "The Orange data frame has 35 rows and 3 columns of records
                 of the growth of orange trees."
)

# To inspect structured metadata from a dataset_df object:
as_dublincore(orange_df, type = "list")

dataset documentation built on Nov. 16, 2025, 5:06 p.m.