========================
ISTP Metadata Guidelines
========================

.. only:: html

   |author|

.. rubric:: Abstract

International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Metadata Guidelines for describing the internal meaning of self-describing scientific data formats, such as `CDF <https://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov>`_ and `netCDF <https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/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 <https://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov>`_, `Autoplot <https://autoplot.org>`_,  `SpacePy <https://spacepy.github.io>`_ and `PySPEDAS <https://pyspedas.readthedocs.io>`_/`SPEDAS <https://spedas.org>`_.

.. only:: html

   .. rubric:: Table of Contents

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 1
   :numbered: 3

   source/01_metadata-intro
   source/02_self-describing-data-format
   source/03_metadata-global-attributes
   source/04_metadata-variables
   source/05_metadata-variable-attributes
   source/06_metadata-keywords
   source/filenaming-dataset-naming-recommendations


.. only:: html

   .. toctree::
      :maxdepth: 1
      :titlesonly:

      Appendix A. Variable Examples <source/07_example-variables>
      Appendix B. Skeleton Table Examples <source/08_example-skeletontables>
      Appendix C. Multi-Mission Use of ISTP Attributes <source/Multi_Mission_Use_of_Attributes>
      Appendix D. Non-ISTP Mission Global Attributes <source/Non-ISTP-Mission-Global-Attributes>
      Appendix E. Non-ISTP Mission Variable Attributes <source/Non-ISTP-Mission-Variable-Attributes>
      Appendix F. Best Practices <source/best-practices>
      Appendix G. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) <source/faq>