In this paper, we present the Core Scientific Metadata Model (CSMD), a model for the representation of scientific study metadata developed within the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to represent the data generated from scientific facilities. The model has been developed to allow management of and access to the data resources of the facilities in a uniform way, although we believe that the model has wider application, especially in areas of “structural science” such as chemistry, materials science and earth sciences. We give some motivations behind the development of the model, and an overview of its major structural elements, centred on the notion of a scientific study formed by a collection of specific investigations. We give some details of the model, with the description of each investigation associated with a particular experiment on a sample generating data, and the associated data holdings are then mapped to the investigation with the appropriate parameters. We then go on to discuss the instantiation of the metadata model within a production quality data management infrastructure, the Information CATalogue (ICAT), which has been developed within STFC for use in large-scale photon and neutron sources. Finally, we give an overview of the relationship between CSMD, and other initiatives, and give some directions for future developments.