Curation and indexing of metadata is a crucial part of journal publishing. The metacapture package is one component in a workflow implementation that is designed to automate the production and copy editing of journal articles.

When a document that loads metacapture is compiled, it produces a YAML-like text file containing all metadata from the document. The metacapture package accomplishes this by providing replacements for the generic macros \title, \author and \maketitle macros that have traditionally been used by document classes. It also provides several implementations of the \maketitle macro in different styles, partly as a way to demonstrate how to separate metadata capture from styling of front matter. Document class designers can also write their own implementation of \maketitle with their preferred styling using the dictionary-like data structures used to hold author metadata.

The metacapture package is part of a larger set of tools for implementing a journal publishing workflow. There is also a companion implementation of a publishing workflow written in Python that is used for this journal and provides a simplified workflow for copy editing and production.