DCAT-US Schema v3.0 Catalog fields

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For the full technical schema reference, see the DCAT-US 3.0 Catalog schema reference.

Overview

The Catalog class is the top-level container for an agency’s data inventory. Your agency’s data.json file is an instance of a DCAT-US Catalog. It holds the array of Dataset records and, in v3.0, can also reference DataService records.

Required field in v3.0: A Catalog must contain at least one Dataset.

Moving from DCAT-US v1.1 to v3.0

If your agency is upgrading from v1.1, your catalog structure carries forward with minimal changes. The dataset array works the same way. The main differences are: @context is no longer a catalog field, conformsTo now uses a Standard object rather than a plain URI string, and describedBy has been removed. Several new optional fields are available, including service for registering APIs and title and description for the catalog itself.

A valid v3.0 catalog requires only one thing: a dataset array containing at least one Dataset record. Everything else is optional at the catalog level. However, adding @id, @type, conformsTo, title, modified, and publisher at the catalog level is strongly recommended as it makes your catalog self-describing and helps harvesters like Data.gov identify and process it correctly.

Your agency’s data.json file is an instance of the Catalog class. The file hosted at agency.gov/data.json is what Data.gov harvests. Setting @id to the URL of your data.json file itself is the recommended way to give your catalog a persistent identifier.

Changes from v1.1

Recommended catalog-level fields

New in v3.0: title, description, publisher, contactPoint, keyword, spatial, language, license, rights, issued, modified, service, record, themeTaxonomy, catalog

Catalog fields

Example

A minimal valid v3.0 catalog:

{
  "@id": "https://www.agency.gov/data.json",
  "@type": "dcat:Catalog",
  "conformsTo": {
    "@type": "Standard",
    "title": "DCAT-US 3.0",
    "identifier": "https://resources.data.gov/dcat-us/3.0.0"
  },
  "dataset": \[
    {
      "@type": "Dataset",
      "title": "Agency Travel Data FY2024",
      "description": "Records of official travel expenditures during fiscal year 2024.",
      "identifier": "https://www.agency.gov/data/travel-fy2024",
      "publisher": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Example Federal Agency"
      },
      "contactPoint": {
        "@type": "Kind",
        "fn": "Jane Smith",
        "hasEmail": "mailto:jane.smith@agency.gov"
      }
    }
  ]
}

A more complete catalog showing recommended fields and a DataService:

{
  "@id": "https://www.agency.gov/data.json",
  "@type": "dcat:Catalog",
  "conformsTo": {
    "@type": "Standard",
    "title": "DCAT-US 3.0",
    "identifier": "https://resources.data.gov/dcat-us/3.0.0"
  },
  "title": "Example Federal Agency Open Data Catalog",
  "description": "The comprehensive data inventory for Example Federal Agency, including all publicly available datasets and APIs.",
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Agent",
    "name": "Example Federal Agency"
  },
  "contactPoint": \[
    {
      "@type": "Kind",
      "fn": "Open Data Team",
      "hasEmail": "mailto:opendata@agency.gov"
    }
  ],
  "language": \["en"],
  "modified": "2025-04-15",
  "issued": "2014-11-06",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/",
  "rights": \["This catalog is maintained by Example Federal Agency."],
  "spatial": \[
    {
      "@type": "Location",
      "prefLabel": "United States"
    }
  ],
  "dataset": \[
    {
      "@type": "Dataset",
      "title": "Agency Travel Data FY2024",
      "description": "Records of official travel expenditures during fiscal year 2024.",
      "identifier": "https://www.agency.gov/data/travel-fy2024",
      "publisher": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Office of the Chief Financial Officer",
        "subOrganizationOf": \[
          {
            "@type": "Organization",
            "name": "Example Federal Agency"
          }
        ]
      },
      "contactPoint": {
        "@type": "Kind",
        "fn": "Jane Smith",
        "hasEmail": "mailto:jane.smith@agency.gov"
      },
      "keyword": \["travel", "expenditure", "fiscal year"],
      "modified": "2024-10-15",
      "accessRights": "public",
      "bureauCode": \["015:11"],
      "programCode": \["015:001"]
    }
  ],
  "service": \[
    {
      "@type": "DataService",
      "title": "Agency Open Data REST API",
      "description": "A REST API providing queryable access to agency datasets in JSON and CSV formats.",
      "endpointURL": \["https://api.agency.gov/v1/"],
      "endpointDescription": \["https://api.agency.gov/v1/openapi.json"],
      "publisher": {
        "@type": "Agent",
        "name": "Example Federal Agency"
      },
      "contactPoint": \[
        {
          "@type": "Kind",
          "fn": "API Support Team",
          "hasEmail": "mailto:api-support@agency.gov"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Source: jsonschema/definitions/Catalog.json · Generated reference: jsonschema/docs/Catalog.md

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