A Multivocal Literature Review of Metadata Governance: Conceptual Foundations and Research Gaps

As digital ecosystems grow and cross-organizational data sharing intensifies, metadata governance has become increasingly important. It plays a critical role in supporting interoperability, accountability, and sustainable data ecosystems. However, metadata governance remains conceptually fragmented and insufficiently structured as a distinct research domain. This study conducts a multivocal literature review (MLR) that integrates academic publications with authoritative non-academic sources, including international standards, governance frameworks, and regulatory instruments. A systematic review process was applied to identify governance constructs, recurring patterns, and conceptual gaps across heterogeneous evidence sources. The findings show that no peer-reviewed studies explicitly integrate metadata governance with formal conceptual structuring. This finding should not be interpreted as a limitation of the search process, but rather as an empirical indication of a structural gap in the literature. It provides a methodological justification for extending the analysis to multivocal evidence. The results further indicate that existing studies predominantly emphasize metadata management and technical interoperability. In contrast, governance-level constructs—such as decision rights, accountability mechanisms, oversight structures, and lifecycle coordination—remain underdefined and inconsistently formalized. This study synthesizes fragmented knowledge into a coherent conceptual understanding of metadata governance, clarifies its distinction from metadata management, and identifies critical research gaps. These findings provide a structured foundation for advancing metadata governance as a cumulative research domain and support future conceptual and methodological research.