Scholarly communicationsDiscussion group

Linked Data Workshop

27-28 May 2010

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Improve the scholarly communications record by linking research articles, citations, underlying data, conference presentations, blogs, wikis and other information resources

Background

Research articles in electronic journals use DOIs and other techniques to point at cited articles and ‘supplemental information’. However many research articles have substantially more information associated with them including data sets, conference presentations, blogs, wikis, tools, &etc. No current mechanism exists to enable researchers to easily navigate to these information sources 

Requirement

Libraries have traditionally played an important role in acting as a trusted repository and authoritative source for a range of physical information resources to support research.  What role should libraries play in the scholarly communication process in the emerging distributed digital information world? Can linked data help make the information ‘ecosystem’ around a research article easy to find? How can libraries facilitate this process?

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Three questions

How could linked data help? Who needs to contribute? What can libraries do?

Challenges

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How could linked data help? (1/2)

URIs linking: Researchers Institutions Grants Funders Research groups Disciplines Publications

Formal Informal

Supporting data Research data Research process Hardware / calibration Scientific arguments

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How could linked data help? (2/2)

Expertise database

Communities of practice / interest

Cross domain

Direct access

Affordability

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Who needs to contribute? (1/2)

Researchers themselves

Publishers

Institutions Repositories

Institutional Subject Bibliometrics

Support Research Assessment Administration? Library?

Libraries

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Who needs to contribute? (2/2)

How important is the persistence of URIs? Who decides? Who pays?

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What can libraries do? (1/2)

Leadership

Trust, Authority, Neutrality, Integrity

Persistence as an institution

Expertise Disambiguation Selection

Driving cultural change

Evaluation beyond traditional peer review

Breaking down the internal silos

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What can libraries do? (2/2)

Practical Exploration Prototyping Demonstrators

Demonstrate value ...and money will follow(?)

Collaborative work Explore user requirements Expose unknown relationships

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CHALLENGES (1/3)

Creating / minting URIs Of researcher

ORCID Open Researcher & Contributor Identification Initiative

Distributed First institution Maintained by current institution

Centralised Community owned?

Control / power Governance

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CHALLENGES (2/3)

Creating / minting URIs Library responsibility?

Those things that the Library wants to make statements about

Asserts that the URI represents the thing, not that the information at the end of a link is accurate

Recasting the role of cataloguing Authority records

Assuring longevity But libraries are at the end of the chain

Publisher role?

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CHALLENGES (3/3)

Willingness to take risk

Give up current processes

Resources Funding Relevant skills

Change in attitude to quality "Good enough"

A completely different model of what a library is?