An important question to consider early in the process is: who or what is responsible for managing your journal’s metadata?
In some cases, journal publishing or hosting software will take care of much of the work of metadata formatting and distribution for you, for example, producing the kind of markup search engines look for, and integrating with Crossref through exports and plugins. On the other hand, editors of smaller journals not using a standard journal management system or a repository like NYU’s Faculty Digital Archive will need to develop their own workflows for preparing metadata, and possibly even format it and distribute it.
Even if your system produces metadata for you, thinking about where it may travel helps you, as a publisher, collect it in such a format so that it easily translates to the needs of different contexts. Knowing where your metadata will go and what it will do can help you be more deliberate about making your work more discoverable.