This is a utility for transforming Ecological Metadata Language ('EML') files into JSON-LD and back into EML. Doing so creates a list-based representation of EML in R, so that EML data can easily be manipulated using standard R tools. This makes this package an effective backend for other R'-based tools working with EML. By abstracting away the complexity of XML Schema, developers can build around native R list objects and not have to worry about satisfying many of the additional constraints of set by the schema (such as element ordering, which is handled automatically). Additionally, the JSON-LD representation enables the use of developer-friendly JSON parsing and serialization that may facilitate the use of EML in contexts outside of R, as well as the informatics-friendly serializations such as RDF and SPARQL queries.