Metadata Quality Assessment in Institutional Repositories: A Multi-Institutional Study
Implications for Discoverability and Cross-Repository Interoperability
Keywords:
Abstract
Institutional repositories (IRs) serve as critical infrastructure for preserving and disseminating scholarly output. However, the quality of metadata in these systems varies significantly across institutions, potentially undermining discoverability and interoperability. This study evaluates metadata completeness and consistency across 47 institutional repositories spanning 12 countries, using a novel assessment framework based on Dublin Core compliance, semantic accuracy, and cross-repository interoperability metrics.
Our findings reveal that while basic descriptive metadata (title, author, date) achieves high completeness rates (>95%), subject classification and rights metadata remain critically underserved, with completeness rates below 40% in most repositories. We identify institutional size, dedicated metadata librarian staffing, and automated harvesting workflows as the strongest predictors of overall metadata quality. The proposed MQAF (Metadata Quality Assessment Framework) provides repository managers with actionable benchmarks and a staged improvement roadmap.
JEL Classification Codes
Information and Internet Services • Computer Software (L86)
Technological Change: Choices and Consequences • Diffusion Processes (O33)
References
Arlitsch, K., & O'Brien, P. S. (2023). Improving institutional repository metadata quality: A practical framework. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 49(3), 102-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2023.01.004
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Google Scholar Links
Shreeves, S. L., & Kirkham, C. M. (2021). Dublin Core metadata quality in institutional repositories: A longitudinal study. D-Lib Magazine, 27(1/2). https://doi.org/10.1045/january2021-shreeves
Google Scholar Links
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Google Scholar Links
Data Availability Statement
The dataset generated during this study, including metadata quality scores for all 47 repositories, is available at the Westbridge University Research Data Repository (https://doi.org/10.5555/data.2026.101). Interview transcripts with repository managers are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Journal of Library & Information Science
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.