The ASCL stores information (metadata) about software used in astrophysics research, and in some cases, also stores the software itself to serve to the public. Our public metadata fields and their characteristics are listed and explained below. In addition, for those fields which have an equivalent element in the CodeMeta schema, we provide the translation of the field (crosswalk) into CodeMeta to aid interoperability across research software resources.
ASCL Data Dictionary and CodeMeta Crosswalk |
||||
| Field name | CodeMeta field | Displayed/ Inferred name | Field type | Explanation of the field |
| ascl_id | identifier | ASCL ID | varchar (8) | The human-friendly version of an ASCL id. The format is YYMM.### where YY is the year, MM is the month, and ### is an incrementing integer padded with zeroes. Except for 0000.000, used for entries not yet assigned an ASCL ID, these are unique and can be used to cite the software entry. |
| title | SoftwareSourceCode:name | name | text | The title of the code, usually with a "short" title (alias) to start, followed by a colon and the longer name. |
| abstract | description | abstract | text | A brief description of the code; this is typically three to six sentences that describes what the code does. |
| credit | author:givenName,familyName; | author | text | A normalized list of author names, not serialized. |
| site_list | codeRepository | Code site | text | A serialized array of sites associated with a code, including a download site. |
| described_in | referencePublication | Described in | text | One or more paper(s), usually refereed, in which the code is described ("code paper"). |
| used_in | relatedLink:url | Used in | text | One or more paper(s), usually refereed, in which the code is used but not described. |
| bibcode | identifier | Bibcode | varchar (19) | The generated SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) bibcode, which links to the entry's ADS record. NASA's ADS uses bibcodes as unique identifiers for its records. |
| citation_method | citation | Preferred citation | text | Resource(s) that should be used to cite the code; these are determined by the software author(s). |
| topic_id | mediumint (8) | The topic id for the code entry's thread on the discussion forum; this is used in the "Discuss" link that, when selected, brings up the thread. | ||
| keywords | keywords | Keywords | text | Currently, funder and mission designations for software funded by or related to NASA or HITS; these are searchable in ASCL and ADS. Suggestions for expanding use of this field are welcome. |
| views | Views | mediumint (8) | The number of times an individual code page has been visited. | |
varchar: character data that varies; that is, it can hold numbers, letters, special characters
text: variable-length character string data values
mediumint: a medium-sized integer
Last update: July 30, 2023