# Masader: Metadata Sourcing for Arabic Text and Speech Data Resources

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.06744 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06744/

## Key facts

- Cited by 20 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Oct 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Datasheets for Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09010/) (2018)
- [AraBERT: Transformer-based Model for Arabic Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00104/) (2020)
- [Construction of the Literature Graph in Semantic Scholar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.02262/) (2018)
- [KLUE: Korean Language Understanding Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09680/) (2021)
- [A Panoramic Survey of Natural Language Processing in the Arab World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12631/) (2020)
- [AraELECTRA: Pre-Training Text Discriminators for Arabic Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15516/) (2020)
- [Arabic natural language processing: An overview](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02784/) (2019)
- [Multi-Dialect Arabic BERT for Country-Level Dialect Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05612/) (2020)
- [Critical Survey of the Freely Available Arabic Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.07835/) (2017)
- [DRIFT: A Toolkit for Diachronic Analysis of Scientific Literature](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.01198/) (2021)
- [Making Metadata Fit for Next Generation Language Technology Platforms: The Metadata Schema of the European Language Grid](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13236/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05100/) (2022)
- [Aya Model: An Instruction Finetuned Open-Access Multilingual Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07827/) (2024)
- [The BigScience ROOTS Corpus: A 1.6TB Composite Multilingual Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03915/) (2023)
- [One Country, 700+ Languages: NLP Challenges for Underrepresented Languages and Dialects in Indonesia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13357/) (2022)
- [NusaCrowd: Open Source Initiative for Indonesian NLP Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09648/) (2022)
- [ClArTTS: An Open-Source Classical Arabic Text-to-Speech Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.00069/) (2023)
- [Documenting Geographically and Contextually Diverse Data Sources: The BigScience Catalogue of Language Data and Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10066/) (2022)
- [The Responsible Foundation Model Development Cheatsheet: A Review of Tools & Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16746/) (2024)
- [Masader Plus: A New Interface for Exploring +500 Arabic NLP Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00932/) (2022)
- [How well can LLMs Grade Essays in Arabic?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16516/) (2025)
- [MOLE: Metadata Extraction and Validation in Scientific Papers Using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19800/) (2025)
- [Estimating the Level of Dialectness Predicts Interannotator Agreement in Multi-dialect Arabic Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11282/) (2024)
- [SAIDS: A Novel Approach for Sentiment Analysis Informed of Dialect and Sarcasm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02521/) (2023)
- [Toxic language detection: a systematic review of Arabic datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07228/) (2023)
- [NusaCrowd: A Call for Open and Reproducible NLP Research in Indonesian Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10524/) (2022)
- [Maknuune: A Large Open Palestinian Arabic Lexicon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12985/) (2022)
- [In What Languages are Generative Language Models the Most Formal? Analyzing Formality Distribution across Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12299/) (2023)
- [MeXtract: Light-Weight Metadata Extraction from Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06889/) (2025)
- [GLARE: Google Apps Arabic Reviews Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15259/) (2024)
- [JobArabi: An Arabic Corpus and Analysis of Job Announcements from Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20960/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The NLP pipeline has evolved dramatically in the last few years. The first step in the pipeline is to find suitable annotated datasets to evaluate the tasks we are trying to solve. Unfortunately, most of the published datasets lack metadata annotations that describe their attributes. Not to mention, the absence of a public catalogue that indexes all the publicly available datasets related to specific regions or languages. When we consider low-resource dialectical languages, for example, this issue becomes more prominent. In this paper we create textitMasader, the largest public catalogue for Arabic NLP datasets, which consists of 200 datasets annotated with 25 attributes. Furthermore, We develop a metadata annotation strategy that could be extended to other languages. We also make remarks and highlight some issues about the current status of Arabic NLP datasets and suggest recommendations to address them.