CKAN extension that integrates the da|ra metadata schema and enables registration of DOIs at da|ra. It has been developed for the EDaWaX project at the ZBW (German National Library of Economics) and is now actively used for the CKAN based RDM platform ZBW Journal Data Archive.

CKAN offers only a kind of general and limited set of metadata for datasets (like title, description, author), that does not reflect any common schema. You can, nevertheless, add arbitrary fields via the webinterface for each dataset. But that’s not schema based. The approach of CKAN here is to avoid extensive metadata forms, that might restrict the usability of the portal, and also not to specialise on certain types or categories of data, like, you name it, research data. Dedicated research data applications like Dataverse do have an advantage here. Dataverse’s metadata forms are based on the well-known and very extensive DDI schema. CKAN is not originally a research data management tool, and the lack of decent metadata schema support is one point where this hurts. However, this more general approach as well as the plugin infrastructure enables us to customise the dataset forms, add specific (meta‑)data, and to guarantee compatibility with a given schema. ckanext-dara does that for the da|ra metadata schema.

ckanext-dara has been developed with two principles in mind:

1. make metadata input and DOI registration as easy as possible
   The ZBW Journal Data Archive is intended for editors and authors of scientific journals, who like to publish the research data on which their article is based. Those persons neither have time nor motivation to fill in 100+ metadata fields before they can upload their data. ckanext-dara therefore provides only a small subset of the original da|ra metadata schema.
2. provide as much metadata as necessary
   Metadata is, however, necessary, even for authors themselves. It's important for the findability of research data as well as for the linking to other objects, and for reproducabilty of data. We are therefore also trying to receive metadata from other services. This is exemplarily realised for the author metadata fields, that retrieve data from ORCID or GND. The author fields also implement a feature orginally not found in CKAN. It enables field repeating, which simply means you can add as many authors as you like.

Tested with CKAN 2.4.

Required Python packages (all installed with the package):

• lxml (for XML validation)
• toolz (a library that eases functional programming with Python)

Clone this repository into your CKAN src folder and install it the usual way pip install -e path/to/repo or python setup.py inside your virtualenv.

If you want to use the DOI registration service at da|ra you must provide the credentials and your registered DOI prefix in your development.ini:

ckanext.dara.user = <your da|ra account ID>
ckanext.dara.password = <your da|ra account password>
ckanext.dara.doi_prefix = <your prefix, e.g. 10.12345>

For developing and testing purposes you can also use the da|ra testserver. However, you'll also have to provide credentials:

ckanext.dara.use_testserver = true #default: false
ckanext.dara.demo.user = <da|ra testaccount>
ckanext.dara.demo.password = <da|ra testpassword>

All metadata fields are based on ckanext.dara.schema. Fields are namedtuples and processed in plugin.py. Widgets are constructed as objects and processed by Jinja macros.

Warning: tests are far from being perfect or complete.

Run the tests the usual way with nosetests. You should however provide the da|ra testserver credentials in test.ini or tests for DOI registration will fail.

This extension is open and licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v3.0. Its full text may be found at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

Please use GitHub issues for filing any bug or problem. If you have further questions please contact h.bunke@zbw.eu.