[Purpose/significance] This paper summarizes the research progress of metadata in scientific data related practical fields including data sharing, management, openness and publishing, in order to reveal the research trend and development trend of metadata, and provide reference for metadata construction and related research. [Method/process]Through literature research, this paper summarizes the research on metadata in scientific data related practice at home and abroad in recent years. [Result / conclusion] Research fields at home and abroad begin to take metadata as a resource, and give full play to its value through organization, association and mining. Generally, combined with the characteristics of scientific data, the standards are modified based on the general standards and integrated to form meta? data application profiles. The quality control of metadata has been a hot topic. However, most of the current researches focus on the summary of practical experience, while the basic theoretical research is relatively deficient. In the future, the research will develop towards the direction of supporting open science construction.