A lightweight approach to research object data packaging

A Research Object (RO) provides a machine-readable mechanism to communicate the diverse set of digital and real-world resources that contribute to an item of research. The aim of an RO is to evolve from traditional academic publication as a static PDF, to rather provide a complete and structured archive of the items (such as people, organisations, funding, equipment, software etc) that contributed to the research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. This is of particular importance as all domains of research and science are increasingly relying on computational analysis, yet we are facing a reproducibility crisis because key components are often not sufficiently tracked, archived or reported. Here we propose Research Object Crate (or RO-Crate for short), an emerging lightweight approach to packaging research data with their structured metadata, rephrasing the Research Object model as schema.org annotations to formalize a JSON-LD format that can be used independently of infrastructure, e.g. in GitHub or Zenodo archives. RO-Crate can be extended for domain-specific descriptions, aiming at a wide variety of applications and repositories to encourage FAIR sharing of reproducible datasets and analytical methods.Abstract accepted for talk at Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC2019). Slides https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1117129.1 Poster https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1117130.1 Video recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AociW94muL

Linked data authority records for Irish place names

Linked Data technologies are increasingly being implemented to enhance cataloguing workflows in libraries, archives and museums. We review current best practice in library cataloguing, how Linked Data is used to link collections and provide consistency in indexing, and briefly describe the relationship between Linked Data, library data models and descriptive standards. As an example we look at the Logainm.ie dataset, an online database holding the authoritative hierarchical list of Irish and English language place names in Ireland. This paper describes the process of creating the new Linked Logainm dataset, including the transformation of the data from XML to RDF and the generation of links to external geographic datasets like DBpedia and the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology. This dataset was then used to enhance the National Library of Ireland's metadata MARCXML metadata records for its Longfield maps collection. We also describe the potential benefits of Linked Data for libraries, focusing on the use of the Linked Logainm dataset and its future potential for Irish heritage institutions

Linked Logainm: enhancing library metadata using linked data of Irish place names

Linked Logainm is the newly created Linked Data version of Logainm.ie, an online database holding the authoritative hierarchical list of Irish and English language place names in Ireland. As a use case to demonstrate the benefit of Linked Data to the library community, the Linked Logainm dataset was used to enhance the Longfield Map collection, a set of digitised 18th–19th century maps held by the National Library of Ireland. This paper describes the process of creating Linked Logainm, including the transformation of the data from XML to RDF, the generation of links to external geographic datasets like DBpedia and the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, and the enhancement of the Library’s metadata records

What you cite is what you get? Verifiable addressing of immutable, self-describing research data

The requirements of FAIR and Reproducible Science are driving new PID requirements around the citation of exact, verifiable versions of research outputs. For example, versioned DOIs have been implemented on various popular platforms (Figshare, Zenodo, F1000). There is also renewed interest in the idea of data packaging as a practical means of bundling data and metadata in a way that can be easily cited and transmitted as a single payload. Similarly, several groups have identified the need to directly and unambiguously reference the exact content of a data payload in PID metadata: — for example, the Freya project is looking at how best to allow “direct access to content associated with a DOI” (see https://github.com/datacite/freya/issues/2), — RDA is tackling similar issues in the PID Kernel Information Working Group (https://www.rd-alliance.org/groups/pid-kernel-information-wg), — and the Software Heritage made ‘verifiability’ a key property of their PID design (https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01865790). This all suggests an appetite within the research community for greater consensus around linking PIDs to versioned (and therefore immutable), self-describing content. Beyond the scholarly communication ecosystem, a number of projects, notably the Interplanetary FileSystem (IPFS) and DAT, use content-addressed, peer-to-peer networks to bake these properties right into the fabric of the network, in a way that has potentially interesting implications for how we share reproducible research outputs. This talk will provide an overview of these issues, explore some of the emerging solutions in the area, as well as the challenges inherent in new approaches

RO-Crate: a lightweight approach to Research Object data packaging.

A Research Object (RO) provides a machine-readable mechanism to communicate the diverse set of digital and real-world resources that contribute to an item of research. The aim of an RO is to replace traditional academic publications of static PDFs, to rather provide a complete and structured archive of the items (such as people, organisations, funding, equipment, software etc) that contributed to the research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. This is increasingly important as researchers now rely heavily on computational analysis, yet we are facing a reproducibility crisis as key components are often not sufficiently tracked, archived or reported. We propose Research Object Crate (or RO-Crate for short), an emerging lightweight approach to package research data with their structured metadata, based on schema.org annotations in a formalized JSON-LD format that can be used independent of infrastructure to encourage FAIR sharing of reproducible datasets and analytical methods.Poster presented at BOSC 2019. See full abstract at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.325068

Linked data authority records for Irish place names

Linked Data technologies are increasingly being implemented to enhance cataloguing workflows in libraries, archives and museums. We review current best practice in library cataloguing, how Linked Data is used to link collections and provide consistency in indexing, and briefly describe the relationship between Linked Data, library data models and descriptive standards. As an example we look at the Logainm.ie dataset, an online database holding the authoritative hierarchical list of Irish and English language place names in Ireland. This paper describes the process of creating the new Linked Logainm dataset, including the transformation of the data from XML to RDF and the generation of links to external geographic datasets like DBpedia and the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology. This dataset was then used to enhance the National Library of Ireland\u27s metadata MARCXML metadata records for its Longfield maps collection. We also describe the potential benefits of Linked Data for libraries, focusing on the use of the Linked Logainm dataset and its future potential for Irish heritage institutions

Linked Logainm: enhancing library metadata using linked data of Irish place names

Linked Logainm is the newly created Linked Data version of Logainm.ie, an online database holding the authoritative hierarchical list of Irish and English language place names in Ireland. As a use case to demonstrate the benefit of Linked Data to the library community, the Linked Logainm dataset was used to enhance the Longfield Map collection, a set of digitised 18th–19th century maps held by the National Library of Ireland. This paper describes the process of creating Linked Logainm, including the transformation of the data from XML to RDF, the generation of links to external geographic datasets like DBpedia and the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, and the enhancement of the Library’s metadata records

Packaging research artefacts with RO-Crate

An increasing number of researchers support reproducibility by including pointers to and descriptions of datasets, software and methods in their publications. However, scientific articles may be ambiguous, incomplete and difficult to process by automated systems. In this paper we introduce RO-Crate, an open, community-driven, and lightweight approach to packaging research artefacts along with their metadata in a machine readable manner. RO-Crate is based on Schema.org annotations in JSON-LD, aiming to establish best practices to formally describe metadata in an accessible and practical way for their use in a wide variety of situations. An RO-Crate is a structured archive of all the items that contributed to a research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. As a general purpose packaging approach for data and their metadata, RO-Crate is used across multiple areas, including bioinformatics, digital humanities and regulatory sciences. By applying “just enough” Linked Data standards, RO-Crate simplifies the process of making research outputs FAIR while also enhancing research reproducibility