Theory and Practice of Data Citation

Citations are the cornerstone of knowledge propagation and the primary means of assessing the quality of research, as well as directing investments in science. Science is increasingly becoming "data-intensive", where large volumes of data are collected and analyzed to discover complex patterns through simulations and experiments, and most scientific reference works have been replaced by online curated datasets. Yet, given a dataset, there is no quantitative, consistent and established way of knowing how it has been used over time, who contributed to its curation, what results have been yielded or what value it has. The development of a theory and practice of data citation is fundamental for considering data as first-class research objects with the same relevance and centrality of traditional scientific products. Many works in recent years have discussed data citation from different viewpoints: illustrating why data citation is needed, defining the principles and outlining recommendations for data citation systems, and providing computational methods for addressing specific issues of data citation. The current panorama is many-faceted and an overall view that brings together diverse aspects of this topic is still missing. Therefore, this paper aims to describe the lay of the land for data citation, both from the theoretical (the why and what) and the practical (the how) angle.Comment: 24 pages, 2 tables, pre-print accepted in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 201

Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education

A study carried out for the UK Joint Information Systems Committee examined models for the provision of access to material in institutional and subject-based archives and in open access journals. Their relative merits were considered, addressing not only technical concerns but also how e-print provision (by authors) can be achieved – an essential factor for an effective e-print delivery service (for users). A "harvesting" model is recommended, where the metadata of articles deposited in distributed archives are harvested, stored and enhanced by a national service. This model has major advantages over the alternatives of a national centralized service or a completely decentralized one. Options for the implementation of a service based on the harvesting model are presented

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field

On-the-fly recommendation retrieval from linked open data repositories

Some recommender systems (RS) utilize Linked Open Data (LOD) to enhance the item descriptions in the local database. However, these systems do not yet take full advantage of the potential of RDF data for personalized retrieval. The work describes the strengths of LOD repositories as well as the challenges of RDF processing for recommendation tasks. Against the background of these characteristics, a recommendation engine, called SKOSRecommender (SKOSRec), was developed. The system utilizes SKOS annotations to determine similar items and provides a graph-based query language for on-the-fly retrieval from SPARQL endpoints. This enables novel retrieval approaches. For instance, the SKOSRec language facilitates the representation of individual user preferences as query-based statements. Hence, it is possible to generate a user profile with the help of a SPARQL-like request (preference querying). Additionally, the language enables subquerying with recommendation results and the usage of graph-based query patterns to formulate powerful filter conditions for result lists (expressive constraint-based queries). Besides, the language allows flexible combinations of graph- and search-based query patterns (i.e., advanced recommendation requests). Examples of such requests are rollup retrieval patterns or cross-domain queries. The novel approaches were evaluated in a series of offline and online experiments in different domains (travel RS, multimedia RS and scientific publication retrieval). The results show that most of the developed methods improve the quality of existing recommendation methods. Effects predominantly occurred in the performance dimensions of recall, novelty, and diversity. The positive evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new methods. Thus, the work can contribute to the advancement of personalized search techniques, which can be applied for semantic retrieval in LOD repositories as well as for typical recommendation tasks

Archiving and disseminating integrative structure models.

Limitations in the applicability, accuracy, and precision of individual structure characterization methods can sometimes be overcome via an integrative modeling approach that relies on information from all available sources, including all available experimental data and prior models. The open-source Integrative Modeling Platform (IMP) is one piece of software that implements all computational aspects of integrative modeling. To maximize the impact of integrative structures, the coordinates should be made publicly available, as is already the case for structures based on X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, and electron microscopy. Moreover, the associated experimental data and modeling protocols should also be archived, such that the original results can easily be reproduced. Finally, it is essential that the integrative structures are validated as part of their publication and deposition. A number of research groups have already developed software to implement integrative modeling and have generated a number of structures, prompting the formation of an Integrative/Hybrid Methods Task Force. Following the recommendations of this task force, the existing PDBx/mmCIF data representation used for atomic PDB structures has been extended to address the requirements for archiving integrative structural models. This IHM-dictionary adds a flexible model representation, including coarse graining, models in multiple states and/or related by time or other order, and multiple input experimental information sources. A prototype archiving system called PDB-Dev ( https://pdb-dev.wwpdb.org ) has also been created to archive integrative structural models, together with a Python library to facilitate handling of integrative models in PDBx/mmCIF format

Implementing the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) for accessibility and reuse of cultural heritage resources on the web – Challenges and Advantages

The accessibility of images-based resources is important for the practice of research, teaching and knowledge transfer in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. In the past twenty-five years, Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) have been digitizing and providing millions of digital surrogates of their artefacts, paintings, books, maps, manuscripts and other objects in digital repositories and web platforms. However, most of those digital resources are still locked up in silos which means they lack interoperability and reusability. To address this issue, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) was created in 2011 by technologists from Stanford University, The British Library and The Bodleian Library, The National Library of Norway and The National Library of France (BnF). This study will address the challenges and advantages of the IIIF’s implementation in digital repositories of CHIs and how the IIIF can enhance research, teaching and knowledge transfer in the social sciences and humanities. This study will also look at the IIIF implementation scenario in Europe and in Portugal through qualitative analysis of professionals’ responses to a questionnaire.A acessibilidade de recursos baseados em imagens é importante para a prática da investigação, ensino e transferência de conhecimentos nas Ciências Sociais e Humanas. Nos últimos vinte e cinco anos, as Instituições de Património Cultural (CHIs) têm vindo a digitalizar e a fornecer milhões de substitutos digitais dos seus artefactos, pinturas, livros, mapas, manuscritos e outros objetos em repositórios digitais e plataformas web. No entanto, a maioria desses recursos digitais ainda se encontram encerrados em silos, o que significa que lhes falta interoperabilidade e reutilização. Para abordar esta questão, o International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) foi criado em 2011 por tecnólogos da Universidade de Stanford, The British Library e The Bodleian Library, The National Library of Norway e The National Library of France (BnF). Este estudo abordará os desafios e vantagens da implementação do IIIF em repositórios digitais de instituições culturais e universidades e como o IIIF pode melhorar a investigação, o ensino e a transferência de conhecimento nas ciências sociais e humanas. Este estudo analisará também o cenário de implementação da IIIF em Portugal através da análise qualitativa das respostas dos profissionais a um questionário

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) in the Semantic Web: A Multi-Dimensional Review

Since the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification and its SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL) became formal W3C recommendations in 2009 a significant number of conventional knowledge organization systems (KOS) (including thesauri, classification schemes, name authorities, and lists of codes and terms, produced before the arrival of the ontology-wave) have made their journeys to join the Semantic Web mainstream. This paper uses "LOD KOS" as an umbrella term to refer to all of the value vocabularies and lightweight ontologies within the Semantic Web framework. The paper provides an overview of what the LOD KOS movement has brought to various communities and users. These are not limited to the colonies of the value vocabulary constructors and providers, nor the catalogers and indexers who have a long history of applying the vocabularies to their products. The LOD dataset producers and LOD service providers, the information architects and interface designers, and researchers in sciences and humanities, are also direct beneficiaries of LOD KOS. The paper examines a set of the collected cases (experimental or in real applications) and aims to find the usages of LOD KOS in order to share the practices and ideas among communities and users. Through the viewpoints of a number of different user groups, the functions of LOD KOS are examined from multiple dimensions. This paper focuses on the LOD dataset producers, vocabulary producers, and researchers (as end-users of KOS).Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, accepted paper in International Journal on Digital Librarie