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How to contribute

CoreMeta4Cat is a community-driven standard — your feedback and knowledge directly shape what gets included. Here are the most common ways to get involved, no coding required.

Give feedback on a specific term

Every field on the schema documentation pages has a Submit Term Feedback button. Click it to open a pre-filled GitHub issue where you can suggest a change, report an error, or ask a question about that specific field. You will need a free GitHub account.

Report a problem or suggest a new field

Use the GitHub Issue Tracker. When opening an issue, try to include:

  • Which data class the field belongs to (Synthesis, Characterization, Reaction, Simulation)
  • What the field should be called and what it means
  • Why it is needed — a concrete example from your research helps a lot
  • Whether it should be Mandatory, Recommended, or Optional, and why

Ask a question

Not sure whether a field exists, or how to annotate something? Use the GitHub Discussions forum — no issue required.

Understanding the vocabulary workbook

Download the vocabulary reference workbook for a structured overview of all fields, organised by data class and colour-coded by importance (Mandatory / Recommended / Optional). The workbook opens with an Introduction sheet and a Legend sheet explaining the colour coding and column meanings.

The schema is the authoritative source — the workbook is generated from it automatically.

Contribute code or schema changes

If you want to contribute a schema change yourself (add a class, slot, or enumeration), please first open an issue to discuss the change. Then follow the developer guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md on GitHub.