Scholarly communications Discussion group Linked Data Workshop May 2010

2 Improve the scholarly communications record by linking research articles, citations, underlying data, conference presentations, blogs, wikis and other information resources Background Research articles in electronic journals use DOIs and other techniques to point at cited articles and ‘supplemental information’. However many research articles have substantially more information associated with them including data sets, conference presentations, blogs, wikis, tools, &etc. No current mechanism exists to enable researchers to easily navigate to these information sources Requirement Libraries have traditionally played an important role in acting as a trusted repository and authoritative source for a range of physical information resources to support research. What role should libraries play in the scholarly communication process in the emerging distributed digital information world? Can linked data help make the information ‘ecosystem’ around a research article easy to find? How can libraries facilitate this process?

3 Three questions How could linked data help? Who needs to contribute? What can libraries do? Challenges

4 How could linked data help? (1/2) URIs linking: Researchers Institutions Grants Funders Research groups Disciplines Publications Formal Informal Supporting data Research data Research process Hardware / calibration Scientific arguments

5 How could linked data help? (2/2) Expertise database Communities of practice / interest Cross domain Direct access Affordability

6 Who needs to contribute? (1/2) Researchers themselves Publishers Institutions Repositories Institutional Subject Bibliometrics  Support Research Assessment Administration? Library? Libraries

7 Who needs to contribute? (2/2) How important is the persistence of URIs? Who decides? Who pays?

8 What can libraries do? (1/2) Leadership Trust, Authority, Neutrality, Integrity Persistence as an institution Expertise Disambiguation Selection Driving cultural change Evaluation beyond traditional peer review Breaking down the internal silos

9 What can libraries do? (2/2) Practical Exploration Prototyping Demonstrators Demonstrate value ...and money will follow(?) Collaborative work Explore user requirements Expose unknown relationships

10 CHALLENGES (1/3) Creating / minting URIs Of researcher ORCID Open Researcher & Contributor Identification Initiative Distributed First institution Maintained by current institution Centralised Community owned? Control / power Governance

11 CHALLENGES (2/3) Creating / minting URIs Library responsibility? Those things that the Library wants to make statements about Asserts that the URI represents the thing, not that the information at the end of a link is accurate Recasting the role of cataloguing Authority records Assuring longevity But libraries are at the end of the chain Publisher role?

12 CHALLENGES (3/3) Willingness to take risk Give up current processes Resources Funding Relevant skills Change in attitude to quality "Good enough" A completely different model of what a library is?