metarelatietags

Metarelatietags are metadata elements that encode relationships between resources, describing how items are connected at a meta level. They go beyond simple topical tags by specifying the nature of the connection and, in some cases, the scope or provenance of that connection.

Generally they consist of a relation type and a target resource, optionally augmented with qualifiers such as confidence, language, or origin. In practice they are implemented as RDF triples or JSON-LD constructs using a controlled vocabulary of relation terms (for example isPartOf, hasPart, relatedTo, cites, derivesFrom).

Metarelatietags support improved discovery, navigation, and data integration in digital libraries, data catalogs, knowledge graphs, and content management systems. They enable explicit linking between resources and can underpin provenance trails, editorial workflows, and recommendation systems.

Standards and vocabularies from the semantic web and metadata communities underpin metarelatietags, including Dublin Core Terms, RDF Schema, SKOS, and Schema.org. Adoption typically relies on a shared set of relation terms to ensure interoperability across datasets and platforms.

Challenges include diversity of vocabularies, multilingual naming, version control, and privacy considerations when linking items. Effective governance, provenance accounting, and tooling are needed to maintain accuracy and usefulness.

See also: metadata, relation type, knowledge graph, RDF, Dublin Core, Schema.org.