Transitive credit

www.ci.anl.gov www.ci.uchicago.edu

Transi3ve Credit

Daniel S. Katz Senior Fellow, Computa3on Ins3tute (University of Chicago & Argonne Na3onal Laboratory) Affiliate Faculty, CCT (LSU) Adjunct Associate Professor, ECE (LSU)


2 Transi3ve Credit

Mo3va3on •  Science relies on ac3vi3es that are not fully recognized

–  Sharing of data; development of common data resources, soPware and methodologies; annota3on of data and publica3ons; crea3ng educa3on modules & tools

•  Accepted problem: many recent reports •  ‘Solu3ons’: e.g., NSF biosketch “products”, not publica3ons •  To promote new scien3fic ac3vi3es, we must:

–  Develop mechanisms for assigning credit –  Facilitate the appropriate aXribu3on of research outcomes –  Devise incen3ves for ac3vi3es that facilitate research –  Allocate funds to maximize return on investment

•  This talk –  New idea, transi've credit, to address the issue of credi3ng indirect contribu3ons

–  Leads to poten3al solu3ons to other problems


3 Transi3ve Credit

History of cita3on •  Formal cita3on originally for authen3ca3on and authority, rather than

for credit and acknowledgment or aXribu3on •  Late 1500s: scien3fic cita3on in Western history appears •  Early 1700s: legal cita3on for understanding precedents

–  Copyright (recognizing authors’ rights) also (1710 Statute of Anne) –  Maybe 3ed to slow societal recogni3on of intellectual property, which

developed alongside the prin3ng press –  Note: science paper authorship is for both authors and contributors

•  Backward ci3ng: looking for the predecessors of an idea. –  E.g., when mul3ple groups claim credit for the same advance, backward

ci3ng may be used—by looking at which groups are cited and how this changes over 3me—to ascertain how the larger scien3fic community assigns credit

•  Forward ci3ng: understanding how an idea is used –  OPen through cita3on indices, e.g. to the Bible from the 1100s –  Use of cita3ons indices in science is much more recent, e.g. by Garfield in

the 1950s: Science Cita3on Index.


4 Transi3ve Credit

Why tradi3onal cita3on is failing

•  New knowledge clearly builds on past knowledge •  Tradi3onally, author cites previous paper by adding a reference to the author, 3tle, place of publica3on etc.

•  Doesn’t work well for digital products such as soPware, which are oPen dependent on libraries (assembled soPware packages), code fragments, and algorithms

•  For these, iden3fier (“name” that refers to a unique product) that should be cited is not clear

•  And, if a cited library depends on another library, the contribu3on of this second library is not captured

•  Similarly, cita3on of a dataset should perhaps give credit to the people who gathered the data, as well as those who curated it, but the paper author may not know or be able to find these details


5 Transi3ve Credit

Social Mo3va3on •  To promote crea3on, maintenance, and use of digital products, must measure

these ac3vi3es, and provide credit to those who do them •  Lack of credit currently is a nega3ve force that stops sharing of digital products

(cf. Lewin’s principle of force field analysis). •  Crea3ng a credit mechanism would both remove the nega3ve force and create

a posi3ve force •  Could change culture, since act of measuring an item and publicizing that

measure leads to a focus on improving the measure, thus improving the item –  Inten3onal, e.g. Check por3on of the Deming Cycle –  Uninten3onal, e.g. teachers teach students to answer specific ques3ons rather

than the material that the ques3ons cover; gaming h-‐index, impact factor, etc. •  In commercial world, credit is generally mone3zed, with soPware and data

commercialized as products that must be purchased –  Alterna3ve solu3on that recognizes producers of products, but doesn’t help

understanding their use in later scien3fic discoveries •  Mo3va3on is of great concern today as science becomes more collabora3ve

(aka team science), and as collabora3on leads to more — and beXer — science –  Average number of authors per paper increasing; collabora3ve projects are

becoming common


6 Transi3ve Credit

Credit Map

Basic idea: For a new product 1.  Decide what to credit

–  People and things: Authors, papers, soPware, data, systems o  Tradi3onally listed in author list, paper body, acknowledgements,

cita3ons, etc. o  All iden3fied uniquely: using ORCIDs, DOIs, etc.

2.  Determine how much credit for each –  Not straighkorward

o  Perhaps hierarchical: determine credit for authors and how to split it, credit for soPware and how to split it, etc.

o  We’ve figured out author ordering in all published papers, we can figure this out too

3.  Person who registers product also registers credit map –  Affirmed by registra3on agency? (cf. Lynch intro)


7 Transi3ve Credit

Example Credit Map

Paper

Author B

... Paper M

... SoPware X ...

0.2 0.05 0.2

Author A

0.2

Data K

...

0.1


8 Transi3ve Credit

JSON-‐LD

•  JavaScript Object Nota3on for Linked Data •  hXp://json-‐ld.org/ •  Extension of the key-‐value based JSON document format

•  Provides a way of describing machine-‐readable informa3on with seman3c context


9 Transi3ve Credit

JSON-‐LD example: {� "@context": "http://schema.org",� "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",� "headline": "Implementing Transitive Credit with JSON-LD",� "dateCreated": "2014-07-10",� "keywords": "transitive credit, json-ld, linked data”,� "author": [ {� "@type": "Person",� "name": "Daniel S. Katz",� "@id": "http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5934-7525”,� "email”: "[email protected]"� "creditWeight": "0.25"� },� {� "@type": "Person",� "name": "Arfon Smith",� "@id": "http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7217-4494", � "email": "[email protected]",� "creditWeight": "0.25"� } ],

"citation": { "articles": [ { "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",� "headline": "Transitive credit ...”, "doi": "10.5334/jors.be",� "creditWeight": "0.3" } ... ], "software": [ { "@type": "Code",� "name": "Fidgit",� "codeRepository": "https://github.com/arfon/fidgit", � "license": "http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT", "creditWeight": "0.04" } ... "data": [ { .....


10 Transi3ve Credit

•  Credit maps are related •  Allows weighted credit to flow down and up

•  Credit for SoPware 12 in Paper is 0.2 * 0.3 (6%) •  Could also look at all papers SoPware 12 contributes to

Author 1

... Paper 4

... SoPware 12 ...

0.1

0.1 0.3

Transi3ve Credit

Paper

Author B

... Paper M

... SoPware X ...

0.2 0.05 0.2

Author A

0.2

Data K

...

0.1


11 Transi3ve Credit

Issues & future work

•  Scien3fic sociotechnical system is moving to make this work –  Need unique IDs for people & products

o  ORCID & DOIs? –  Registering credit maps

o  Implement within handle/DOI? –  Tracking product usage to make genera3ng credit maps easier o  Provenance systems?

•  Standards (e.g. CASRAI, VIVO)? •  Social/cultural acceptance? •  Test in a domain to see what is learned?


12 Transi3ve Credit

Credits •  Ini3al discussions about this in 2010 Ins3tute for Compu3ng in Science

(ICiS) workshop breakout session with Jacob Foster (U Chicago) & Robert Stevens (U Manchester)

•  Further discussions with David Proctor (NSF) & Ian Foster (U Chicago) •  D. S. Katz, "Cita3on and AXribu3on of Digital Products: Social and

Technological Concerns," 1st Workshop on Sustainable SoPware for Science: Prac3ce and Experiences (WSSSPE1), in conjunc3on with SC13, figshare, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.791606, 2013

•  D. S. Katz, "Transi3ve Credit as a Means to Address Social and Technological Concerns Stemming from Cita3on and AXribu3on of Digital Products," Journal of Open Research SoPware, v.2(1): e20, pp. 1-‐4, 2014 (DOI: 10.5334/jors.be)

•  D. S. Katz, A. M. Smith, "Implemen3ng Transi3ve Credit with JSON-‐LD," 2nd Workshop on Sustainable SoPware for Science: Prac3ce and Experiences (WSSSPE2), in conjunc3on with SC14, arXiv:1407.5117 [cs.CY], 2014