Researchers with federal funds may wish to review:
White House Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-13-13 ("...this Memorandum establishes a framework to help institutionalize the principles of effective information management at each stage of the information's life cycle to promote interoperability and openness.")
Project Open Data: Open Data Policy -- Managing Information as an Asset (with principles, data standards, common core metadata, etc.)
Data Gathering, Processing & Analysis: Best Practices in Data Management
This is a web-based editor that lets you create an XML file of a Federal Geographic Data Committee Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata record.
