Hello Tim!
We are talking here about a very old workflow called Publish Link which provides the ability to export media to the same file system as the source media and try to create file system hard links to avoid duplicating media. This capability enabled a lot of Flame long form finishing workflows many moons ago. It was used with DPX source at the beginning of the DI era and made its way to Scene Linear / ACES workflow with OpenEXR.
If you publish sources and there is no FX and that the resolution, bit depth, compression matches the source file AND that the destination is on the same file system then
resulting files will not be new media but hardlink, pointing to the original files and then you will have access to the full metadata.
If you modify any export parameters breaking the hard link mecanism then we will generate new media and no metadata will be available.