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delma

Overview

delma is a package for converting metadata statements written in R Markdown or Quarto markdown to Ecological Metadata Language (EML). Ecological Metadata Language (EML) is a common framework for describing ecological datasets so they can be shared and reused. delma supports users to write metadata statements in R Markdown or Quarto markdown for greater transparency and ease-of-use, then convert them to EML for efficient transfer.

delma is named for a genus of legless lizards that are endemic to Australia, whose name happens to contain the letters ‘e’, ‘m’ and ‘l’.

The logo depicts a striped legless lizard (Delma impar) in the style of the classic mobile game ‘snake’, a play on the observation that Delma are often mistaken for snakes. It was designed by Martin Westgate.

If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please contact us.

Installation

You can install from CRAN using:

Alternatively, you can install the latest development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("AtlasOfLivingAustralia/delma")

Load the package:

Basic usage

The primary use case for delma is to build metadata statements for sharing biodiversity data. To get started, create a basic template with use_metadata_template().

use_metadata_template("my_metadata_statement.Rmd")

Here is a short, minimal example of what a metadata template looks like.

---
title: A Descriptive Title for your Dataset in Title Case
output: html_document
date: 2025-02-01
---

## Dataset

### Title

### Creator

#### Individual Name

##### Given Name
Firstname

##### Surname
Lastname

#### Address

Users can add any additional headings to their metadata statement that conform with EML standard. The header level (i.e. the number of #) designates the degree of nesting.

This document can be knit like any other R Markdown or Quarto document (using either the ‘knit’ button in RStudio or rmarkdown::knit()) to the format defined in the yaml section, which defaults to html_document.

To convert an R Markdown metadata statement to EML, use:

render_metadata("my_metadata_statement.Rmd")

This reformats our metadata in EML and saves it as a file. EML documents are saved as .xml files.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<eml:eml xmlns:eml="https://eml.ecoinformatics.org/eml-2.2.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" packageId="the-doi-for-this-archive" system="https://doi.org" scope="system" xsi:schemaLocation="http://rs.gbif.org/schema/eml-gbif-profile/1.3/eml-gbif-profile.xsd">
  <dataset>
    <title>A Descriptive Title for your Dataset in Title Case</title>
    <creator>
      <individualName>
        <givenName>Firstname</givenName>
        <surName>Lastname</surName>
      </individualName>
    </creator>
  </dataset>
</eml:eml>

To check that your document is formatted in accordance with the EML standard, use:

check_metadata("metadata.xml")

For a more detailed description of delma’s capabilities and methods, see the ‘Quick start guide’ vignette.

Citing delma

To generate a citation for the package version you are using, you can run:

citation(package = "delma")

The current recommended citation is:

Westgate MJ, Balasubramaniam S & Kellie D (2025) Convert R Markdown and Quarto documents to Ecological Metadata Language. R Package version 0.1.0.