SISP 4 - A metadata convention for processed acoustic data from active acoustic systems

Metadata is data describing data, and should allow potential users to determine the fitness for their purposes of that data from the metadata alone, without having to access the actual data. A metadata convention is a systematic set of metadata attributes that have been developed to describe a particular genre or type of data. This document describes a metadata convention that details the attribute fields necessary to describe water column backscatter data obtained from active acoustic systems.
This convention is not intended to conform to general metadata standards, such as FGDC, ISO:19115/19139, etc., nor to describe a metadata profile consistent with such standards. Essentially it describes a set of attributes to be included with the acoustic data itself to make a fully self-documenting dataset. In addition to these, it also defines best practice for storing and managing fisheries acoustic data by providing a standard approach. That said, the metadata elements described here include all those necessary to populate any aggregated (or even global) metadata catalogue describing the available bioacoustic datasets managed in multiple institutional repositories.