Most Earth System Science (ESS) research projects are data driven and/or produce data sets as main results. Metadata management is core to support discovery and reuse of such results, and ultimately to allow for reproducibility of the research findings. Thus, ensuring acquisition and provision of meaningful and quality assured metadata should become an integral part of such projects. Here, choosing a suitable metadata schema and/or developing a proper metadata profile is a relevant task at the beginning of each project. Building on available, well-known and well-used, often standardized formats and schemas is strongly recommended. This document serves as guideline for researchers, who need to manage metadata with certain project-specific requirements. It guides metadata managers to create a suitable metadata schema, which meets the project-specific requirements. Metadata consumers will get an overview about relevant aspects, basic principles and standards to understand available metadata and to aggregate or summarize metadata for their purposes. This guide starts with a short introduction, followed by an overview about the stepwise development of a metadata schema or profile. All necessary steps will be explained and underpinned with links for further readings to keep this document short. The metadata schema developed in the GeoKur research project (https://geokur.geo.tu-dresden.de/) serves as the blueprint for this guide.