Data Category Registry (DCR) was developed within ISO TC 37. The motivation of developing DCR was to provide a list of linguistic concepts and data categories covering a wide range of linguistic domains, such that it can be used for various applications, for instance linguistic annotation, design of dictionaries, meta-data description, text markup etc. By means of the data categories, DCR allows interoperability between DCR-based tools and resources.

DCR provides the possibility to use existing data categories. It specifies principles to extend the existing data categories, or to create new data categories. The specification is composed of three main parts: administrative, descriptive and linguistic part. These parts should guarantee that the data categories are interoperable and proper for developing new applications or improving existing applications.

Since 2009 the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen has been developing a web-based open source reference of the ISO 12620 standard, which is called ISOcat (“Data Category Registry for ISO TC 37”). The ISOcat describes the data model and procedures for DCR. It is mainly beneficial for creating specifications of DCR data category and management.