ISTP Metadata Guidelines

International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Metadata Guidelines for describing the internal meaning of self-describing scientific data formats, such as CDF and netCDF in Heliophysics. Originally developed in the early 1990's as part of the ISTP science initiative for use by the Polar, Wind, Geotail, and Cluster missions, they were later adopted by the Interagency Consultative Group (IACG) for Space Science. The Guidelines are now used by most of the major heliophysics missions, including MMS, Van Allen Probes, Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter and IMAP, and are supported by numerous display and analysis tools, including CDAWeb, Autoplot, SpacePy and PySPEDAS/SPEDAS.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Self-Describing Scientific Data Formats

ISTP Global Attributes

ISTP Variables

ISTP Variable Attributes

Dictionary Keywords

File and Dataset Naming Practices

Appendix A. Variable Examples

Appendix B. Skeleton Table Examples

Appendix C. Multi-Mission Use of ISTP Attributes

Appendix D. Non-ISTP Mission Global Attributes

Appendix E. Non-ISTP Mission Variable Attributes

Appendix F. Best Practices

Appendix G. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)