 Contextual Metadata Jan Dvorak CERIF Task Group euroCRIS Charles University in Prague, CZ InfoScience Praha, CZ The 2013 euroCRIS Seminar :: September 9-10, 2013 in Brussels, Belgium

Research Metadata  Discovery metadata for information to be found  Serve many specific use-cases, scenarios, niches  Many standards  Tens of major ones  Hundreds of domain-specific standards ……  Thousands on experiment-level

The Purpose of Metadata  Enable the re-use of resources  Knowledge stored in publications  Data in datasets  Functionality in software  Participation in events  Infrastructure  Facilities  Equipment  Services

Common Grounds  Organisations  Universities, Research institutes, Hi-tech companies  Funding bodies & organisations  Publishers  Facility operators  People  Researchers  Management

One Domain Research

Consistency  Several possible views of the same objects  Inconsistencies would be unprofessional (at the very least)

Common Metadata Format?  To drive all the discovery metadata views  A lingua franca for research

Requirements  Complete coverage of research information  Interlinked: the context  Allow for many perspectives on the research information  Accommodate multilinguality: support translations  Accept the world keeps changing: record history  Declared semantics: definitions rather than terms  Formal syntax – machine processable & understandable

… the answer CERIF C ommon E uropean R esearch I nformation F ormat C ommon E xchange R esearch I nformation F ormat

CERIF: a concise history  CERIF91 – flat file  CERIF 2000 – database structured  CERIF 2006 – semantics moved into Semantic Layer  XML exchange format  CERIF 1.5 (2012) – federated identifiers  XML exchange format polished  CERIF 1.6 (2013) – datasets supported

CERIF: Complete Coverage cfExpertise AndSkills cfEquipment cfFunding cfFacility cfService cfCitation cfEvent cfLanguagecfCurrency cfCountry cfCurriculum Vitae cfPrize cfQualification cfGeographic BoundingBox cfPostalAddress cfElectronicAddress cfPerson cfProject cfOrganisation Unit cfResultPaten t cfResult Publication cfResultProduct cfIndicator cfMeasurement cfFederated Identifier

CERIF: Many Perspectives  Start from any entity:  Project – funding, consortium, project team, outputs  Publication – authors, publisher, funding  Research dataset – creator/contributor, origin project, publications that build upon it  Person – outputs, datasets, projects, events, … ……  A mesh, a fully connected graph

CERIF: Multilinguality  Any free-text attribute is treated as:  Possibly multi-valued  Each value qualified with  Language code  Translation mode  Original value  Human translation  Machine translation

CERIF: Interlinking  (Almost) any entity connected to any other entity  Most entities connected to itself  “is-part-of / has part”  “builds upon / is used by”

CERIF: Record History  Every relationship records the time interval in which it is/was/will be true  Open ends represented by effective ±∞  When something changes:  the old relationship is not removed, only its end date is set  a new relationship is inserted, starting now  Historic data accumulates

CERIF: Declared Syntax  Terms can be misleading  Senior researcher vs. Research associate  It’s the real meaning that matters  Definition  Description  Examples

Research Information Infrastructure Discovery metadata generated from CERIF references Detailed (meta)data