The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) manages metadata information for every taxon primary occurrence dataset and names checklist resource connected to the IPT. In addition, a user may publish metadata about any other external resource defined by the user but not published through the IPT.  The metadata standard used by the IPT is Ecological Metadata Language (EML) which allows users to define taxonomic, geospatial and temporal scope, along with rights and citation, contact information and keywords. GBIF has defined its own profile of EML known as the "GBIF EML Profile".  A metadata profile is a recommended subset of the elements of a metadata standard for use by a particular community of users. For further information, consult the GBIF Metadata Profile – Reference Guide. A schema is also available to test metadata documents for conformance with the GBIF profile.

Metadata created using the IPT is output as EML XML documents and stored on the local network. An RSS feed provides news on recently changed or newly created resources. GBIF is developing a harvesting mechanism to allow indexing of the metadata in the GBIF metadata catalogue, where it will be searchable along with metadata from several other sources.