This paper describes a study developed with the goal to understand the panorama of
the metadata Application Profiles (AP): (i) what AP have been developed so far; (ii) what type of
institutions have developed these AP; (iii) what are the application domains of these AP; (iv)
what are the Metadata Schemes (MS) used by these AP; (v) what application domains have been
producing MS; (vi) what are the Syntax Encoding Schemes (SES) and the Vocabulary Encoding
Schemes (VES) used by these AP; and finally (vii) if these AP have followed the Singapore
Framework (SF). We found (i) 74 AP; (ii) the AP are mostly developed by the scientific
community, (iii) the ‘Learning Objects’ domain is the most intensive producer; (iv) Dublin Core
metadata vocabularies are the most used and are being used in all domains of application and
IEEE LOM is the second most used but only inside the ‘Learning Objects’ application domain;
(v) the most intensive producer of MS is the domain of ‘Libraries and Repositories’; (vi) 13
distinct SES and 90 distinct VES were used; (vi) five of the 74 AP found follow the SF.This work is sponsored by FEDER funds through the
Competitivity Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE)
and by National funds through Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT) within the scope of the project: FCOMP01-0124-FFEDER-022674.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio