TY - CONF T1 - Metadata Usage Tendencies in Latin American Electronic Journals T2 - Rethinking Electronic Publishing: Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing Y1 - 2009 A1 - Coto, Rolando A1 - Helena Francke A1 - Saray Córdoba KW - Latin America KW - Metadata KW - Metadata Usage Patterns KW - Open Access Journals KW - Scholarly Journals AB -

The present study investigates the extent to which metadata tags are used in Latin American electronic journals, and whether these journals in fact provide basic information (abstracts, keywords, etc.) that could be tagged as metadata. The authors also studied multilingualism in the marked-up information and in the basic information, particularly the use of English (which can help bring the scientific production of Latin America to a wider audience). In total, 45% of the journals had metadata; the metatags keywords and description were the most commonly used. The inclusion of structured metadata from the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set in the journals was found to be very low, only 13%, and primarily existed in journals from Argentina, Costa Rica, and Brazil. The articles examined did not always include abstracts and keywords (84% and 77% respectively), but in the articles that did have them, English was frequently used (85% in abstracts and 91% in keywords). The element was found to be used deficiently: Only 42% of full text OA articles had their actual title in the tag, which can potentially affect visibility in a search engine results. In sum, the road to marked-up metadata in all journals is still long, and there are great inconsistencies in how metadata are employed and in their content. The authors conclude that there are signs that support and efforts to increase awareness of how metadata can easily be included in a journal’s web site may result in improved metadata and greater visibility.</div></p> JA - Rethinking Electronic Publishing: Innovation in Communication Paradigms and Technologies - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Electronic Publishing T3 - ELPUB CY - Milano, Italy SP - 311-334 J1 - ELPUB2009 ID - oai:elpub.id:155_elpub2009 ER -