Category Archives: oa.metadata

Current State and Future Directions for Open Repositories in Europe

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“In January 2023, OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe, and COAR launched a joint strategy aimed at strengthening the European repository network. As a first step, a survey of the European repository landscape was undertaken in February-March 2023. The survey found that, collectively, European repositories acquire, preserve and provide open access to tens or possibly hundreds of millions of valuable research outputs and represent critical, not-for-profit infrastructure in the European open science landscape. They are used for sharing articles that may be pay-walled in published journals, but also for providing access to a large variety of other types of research outputs including research data, theses/dissertations, conference papers, preprints, code, and so on. 

However, in order to ensure the European repository network is fit for purpose and able to support the evolving needs of the research community, the survey also identified three areas in particular that could be strengthened: maintaining up-to-date, highly functioning software platforms; applying consistent and comprehensive good practices in terms of metadata, preservation, and usage statistics; and gaining appropriate visibility in the scholarly ecosystem.

Despite the challenges, the current climate offers exciting opportunities for repositories. Many funders are actively promoting the repository route for articles because of their role in supporting equitable access to content (i.e. no fees to access or deposit). The value proposition for open science is growing and repositories are increasingly recognised as the main mechanism for collecting and providing access to a wide range of other research outputs. Add to this, the nascent, but growing, interest in the publish-review-curate model in which repositories have a central function, and it seems they are well placed to expand their current role in the ecosystem. 

The survey provides essential data that will help shape a joint strategy to enhance and strengthen European repositories that will be developed over the next several months.”

Focused Issue on Digital Library Challenges to Support the Open Science Process | International Journal on Digital Libraries

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Abstract:  Open Science is the broad term that involves several aspects aiming to remove the barriers for sharing any kind of output, resources, methods or tools, at any stage of the research process (https://book.fosteropenscience.eu/en/). The Open Science process is a set of transparent research practices that help to improve the quality of scientific knowledge and are crucial to the most basic aspects of the scientific process by means of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) principles. Thanks to research transparency and accessibility, we can evaluate the credibility of scientific claims and make the research process reproducible and the obtained results replicable. In this context, digital libraries play a pivotal role in supporting the Open Science process by facilitating the storage, organization, and dissemination of research outputs, including open access publications and open data. In this focused issue, we invited researchers to discuss innovative solutions, also related to technical challenges, about the identifiability of digital objects as well as the use of metadata and ontologies in order to support replicable and reusable research, the adoption of standards and semantic technologies to link information, and the evaluation of the application of the FAIR principles.

 

Research Organization Registry (ROR) | Case Study: Clear Skies, Research Integrity, Data Science, and ROR

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“Having institutional identifiers in there, it’s part of the puzzle. And it’s an important part of the puzzle. But there are limits to data analysis. Data analysis has got to help people to do the investigation – not try to do it for them.”

“If we’re talking about misconduct, then you might need to be able to contact the institution that the author is from. On an individual manuscript, it doesn’t matter if there’s no identifier – an address will do. But if you find some signal that is on manuscripts at scale, and you’ve got thousands of them, well, you need an identifier. You can’t go through them and try and search for every single one of those institutions.”

“Having nice, clean, big, open datasets like this is really valuable, especially for a problem like this one, a problem which does require taking a big step back and looking at all of the data together, and not having barriers in the way of getting parts of it.”

Joint Statement on Research Data – DataCite

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“Signatories of this statement recommend the following as best practice in research data sharing:

 

When publishing their results, researchers deposit related research data and outputs in a trustworthy data repository that assigns persistent identifiers (DOIs where available). Researchers link to research data using persistent identifiers.
When using research data created by others, researchers provide attribution by citing the datasets in the reference section using persistent identifiers.
Data repositories enable sharing of research outputs in a FAIR way, including support for metadata quality and completeness.
Publishers set appropriate journal data policies, describing the way in which data is to be shared alongside the published article. 
Publishers set instructions for authors to include Data Citations with persistent identifiers in the references section of articles.
Publishers include Data Citations and links to data in Data Availability Statements with persistent identifiers (DOIs where available) in the article metadata registered with Crossref. 
In addition to Data Citations, Data Availability Statements (human- and machine-readable) are included in published articles where appropriate. 
Repositories and publishers connect articles and datasets through persistent identifier connections in the metadata and reference lists.
Funders and research organizations provide researchers with guidance on open science practices, track compliance with open science policies where possible, and promote and incentivize researchers to openly share, cite and link research data.
Funders, policymaking institutions, publishers and research organizations collaborate towards aligning FAIR research data policies and guidelines.
All stakeholders collaborate in the development of tools, processes, and incentives throughout the research cycle to enable sharing of high-quality research data, making all steps in the process clear, easy and efficient for researchers by providing support and guidance.
Stakeholders responsible for research assessment take into account data sharing and data citation in their reward and recognition system structures….”

A new revolutionary workflow for a unified collection of citations: say hello to the OpenCitations Index – OpenCitations blog

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“In the past five years, the OpenCitations data has been enriched with numerous new indexes of open citation data from different sources. However, the quantity and diversification of the ingested information have raised several issues, which recently made it essential to conduct a complete revision of the ingestion workflow. The result was a revolution in the way OpenCitations data is delivered. In this blog post, we will explain the context and challenges raised by the old procedure. Then, we will present the new ingestion workflow, designed to produce just two comprehensive collections: OpenCitations Index, collecting open citation data, and OpenCitations Meta, for the open bibliographical metadata….”

Beyond compliance: Curation as essential open science infrastructure – Data Curation Network

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“However, when that open data is misorganized, appears sloppy, or is poorly documented, this doesn’t inspire the confidence that we want; this isn’t really open science. It’s not just about openly sharing data, it’s about sharing data that is well-organized, well-documented, interpretable, and re-usable. We saw both sides of this so clearly during the pandemic: sharing data, especially genetic data about the virus, accelerated our response to the pandemic — but we also saw high-profile cases that centered on the challenges of data that can’t or won’t be shared. 

Federal and private funders are increasingly requiring data sharing. Merely “open” data isn’t enough to combat misinformation or the rising mistrust of research, however. So how do we move from a compliance mindset, which promotes a minimalist approach in which researchers might only put in the minimum amount of effort and thus potentially share poorly documented or disorganized data, to an ecosystem that actually enables and rewards open, equitable, and accessible scholarship? It’s important to note that a key part of this conversation requires nuance. It is not enough to share or not share data — we have to think of what data can be shared, in what forms, and with what documentation. We have to consider all of the potential outputs of a research project, including how best to organize distinct yet interrelated components and how to document these decisions clearly….”

Exploring Metadata Quality for Scientific Data in Indian Research Data Repositories: A Survey

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Abstract:  The study aims to trace the development of Indian Research Data repositories (RDRs) indexed in Registry of Research Data Repositories(re3data.org) with their types, subject coverage, software tools, standards and specification used for implementation. The study strives to achieve the following objectives such as: to analyze different aspects of Indian Research Data Repositories(RDRs), to identify data licenses, data upload and access restriction policies and to ascertain quality of scientific metadata being used in RDRs in India. The result of the survey is presented by examining the collected data from the libraries of Research Data Repositories. The result of the study will help to find the effective and qualitative research data in various discipline in Indian subcontinent.

 

UKCoRR Members’ Day – CORE Panel Session – CORE

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“The UKCoRR Members’ Day took place on November 13th and, at very short notice, was held online due to the ongoing technical problems currently being experienced by The British Library, who were the original hosts for the day long event.

Our panel session, entitled “CORE, repositories and supporting UKRI OA Policy” saw substantial participation with more than 120 people from U.K. HEIs in attendance. The session opened with a presentation from Professor Petr Knoth, Head of CORE. This presentation detailed CORE’s recent advancements and developments planned for the coming months, with the focus on how the tools and services being built by CORE can best serve the repository communities’ needs, with particular regard to the UKRI’s Open Access policy.

To be considered compliant with UKRI’s open access requirements, research articles made available via repositories are required to meet the following technical requirements. The relevant CORE Dashboard tool for each requirement is shown in orange:

“PIDs for research outputs must be implemented according to international recognised standards. …” (OAI Resolver)

“article-level metadata must be implemented according to a defined application profile that supports the UKRI Open Access Policy …” (Rioxx metadata validator)

“… deposit the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (or Version of Record, where the publisher permits) in an institutional or subject repository at the time of final publication …” (OA Compliance module)

“… common unique PIDs for research management information (for example identifiers for funders or organisations) are strongly encouraged. ORCID, the researcher identifier, must be supported …” (Enrichments tab)…”

US Repository Network launches pilot to enhance discoverability of Open Access content in repositories

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“In November, the US Repository Network (USRN) will launch a pilot project aimed at improving the discoverability of articles in repositories. This pilot project involves the use of services from CORE, a not-for-profit aggregator based at Open University in the UK, to evaluate and improve local repository practices. Additional technical support will be provided by Antleaf Ltd.

As part of the project, CORE will aggregate the metadata and full text of articles from a subset of US repositories, allowing them to be findable through a centralized discovery service with prominent links back to the original full text of the repository. At the same time, the project will assess current practices related to metadata quality, the tracking of Open Access deposits, the use of PIDs, technical support for OAI-PMH, and the adoption of more recent protocols, such as FAIR Signposting. At the level of the centralized aggregation, CORE will enrich the existing US metadata with information from its larger international aggregation. A Dashboard service for participating institutions will be provided, enabling them to assess, validate and monitor their practices.

The one-year project involves 18 repositories representing a variety of institutions, software types and repository models and will result in concrete recommendations and best practice guidelines for machine and human discoverability of research articles in US repositories.”

Open Metadata and Libraries | Open Access Books Network

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By Jeffrey Edmunds, Digital Access Coordinator at the Penn State University Libraries

The phrase “Open Access” evokes, for most of us, Open Access resources: OA books, OA articles, OA journals. Equally important however, and often overlooked, is the metadata describing them. The visibility and discoverability of Open Access resources depends in part on good metadata, and since OA materials fall outside the traditional workflows of libraries acquisitions and cataloging, they are frequently under-described. A lack of good metadata impedes their discovery and lessens their visibility in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

Metadata for Open Access books originates with publishers, who generally use a metadata format known as ONIX (ONline Information eXchange). To be useful for libraries, ONIX data needs to be transformed into MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging), the international standard for the capture and exchange of bibliographic metadata. MARC records are then loaded into library discovery systems such as catalogs to facilitate search and retrieval of Open Access materials.

Unfortunately, the current ecosystem, just as it remains biased against Open Access resources (most academic libraries rely on a tiny number of large publishers and discovery providers for both their electronic resources, locked behind paywalls, and the systems to manage them), is also skewed against the free and open sharing of metadata.

[…]

 

Open-Access-Metadaten: mehr Transparenz durch PIDs!  – TIB-Blog

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Wie können offene Metadaten zu einer inklusiveren Open-Access-Kultur beitragen? Welche Voraussetzungen müssen geschaffen werden, damit von kommerziellen Verlagen unabhängige Zeitschriften in diesem Bereich konkurrenzfähig bleiben oder werden, um für Autor:innen attraktiv zu sein?

The status quo of Indian data repositories indexed in re3data registry

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Abstract:  Purpose

The purpose of this study was to understand the landscape of Indian research data repositories (RDRs) indexed in the re3data.org. The study analysed the metadata elements of Indian RDRs to identify their disciplinary orientations, typology, standards adopted, foreign collaborations, etc. The study ascertained the current status of the Indian RDRs by visiting their respective websites and tried to identify and map the exact disciplinary orientation of each RDR.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used “content analysis” of the metadata elements extracted from re3data.org along with the information analysis of the respective websites of the registered RDRs.

Findings

The study identified that only 80% of the Indian RDRs listed by the re3data.org is currently active. Most of the Indian RDRs are hosted by the central and state governments and are almost equally distributed among Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences domains. The data provided by the re3data.org for the Indian RDRs are not complete and up-to-date.

Practical implications

The findings indicate the presence of a good number of inactive RDRs in the re3data.org. The study suggests using a revised version of the DFG subject classification scheme or considering a standard classification scheme for subject indexing.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that critically analysed the metadata values extracted and moved further to identify the current status of Indian RDRs.

Free Ebook Foundation and OAPEN collaborate to check DOAB links

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“The Free Ebook Foundation and the OAPEN Foundation have unveiled a new website that is checking all the links in the Directory of Open Access Books. The website, open to for all to access checks each of over 68,000 links in DOAB approximately once a month. The DOAB-Check website presents lists of the checked links, organized by publisher, by the web host, and by they type of problem observed for the most recent check. The entire set of recent checks is available as a bulk download, and an API provide for programmatic access to link status for any DOAB identifier. As of the beginning of November, 68,765 links are being checked, and 5,667 of them have issues of some sort…..”

Helping Others Use Your Data: Lessons From the Field of Neuroscience

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“So you’ve created an amazing dataset that you would love for other researchers to have access to. What’s next? Join experts from NeuroImaging Data Model (NIDM) and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics to learn about metadata: what it is, why it is important, and how the Open Science Framework and other tools can make it easy for you to include it with your project materials so others can find the data you’ve worked so hard to curate.