Metadata and its Relationshipto Journal Workflow

SSP Seminar in Philadelphia, PADavid Yakimischak, Chief Technology Officer

November 18, 2004 www.jstor.org

Agenda

• What is JSTOR?• What is Metadata?• What is Journal Workflow?• What is the relationship?• Discussion

JSTOR Mission

• JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of the advances in information technology. This includes: (1) building a reliable and comprehensive archive of core scholarly journals, and (2) dramatically improve access to this scholarly material

• In pursuing its mission, JSTOR takes a system-wide perspective, seeking benefits for libraries, publishers and scholars

JSTOR Today

• 2,160 participating libraries• 269 participating publishers• 449 journals online• 16,379,559 pages scanned (and

counting!)• Formed an Electronic Archiving

initiative in 2003

JSTOR Monthly Usage

Meaningful Accesses per Month

0

5,000,000

10,000,000

15,000,000

20,000,000

25,000,000

Jan-97

Apr-97

Jul-97

Oct-97

Jan-98

Apr-98

Jul-98

Oct-98

Jan-99

Apr-99

Jul-99

Oct-99

Jan-00

Apr-00

Jul-00

Oct-00

Jan-01

Apr-01

Jul-01

Oct-01

Jan-02

Apr-02

Jul-02

Oct-02

Jan-03

Apr-03

Jul-03

Oct-03

Jan-04

Apr-04

Jul-04

Oct-04

What is Metadata?

• Data about data• Internally we outlaw the unqualified

use of the word metadata• Three broad categories

• Descriptive Metadata• Technical Metadata• Administrative Metadata

Descriptive Metadata

• Describes the content or underlying asset• Bibliographic information• Title, author, journal, date, page, etc.• Used to create citations• Use to categorize or organize information• Creates the browse interface to content

Technical Metadata

• Describes the structure or format of an item

• Allows for verification or validation• Typically used for internal operations• A registry can be used to catalog these• Commonly needs to be migrated,

although this applies to all metadata• Most suitable for automated processing

Administrative Metadata

• Generally deals with how an item has been handled

• Most relevant to the archival records• Tracks history of change or access• Closely related to workflow• Can be gathered automatically and

unobtrusively

What is Journal Workflow?

• The process of creating the finished product

• Can be formal or ad-hoc• Automated or manual• Stress-relieving or stress-inducing

What is the relationship?

• Metadata can be managed during the journal workflow process• Added, ingested, modified, calculated, stored, versioned

• Metadata is used to drive the workflow process itself

• The intended use must be considered carefully• Why are we gathering this?• Who is the audience? When? Why?• What about statistics, for example?• Connections into other business process systems

JSTOR Observations

• Metadata is created for every word, illustration, page, article, issue, title

• Authorizable units are described with metadata• Users are described with metadata• We have established internal guidelines and

standards• Relationship to, but not the same as external exposure

• Quality assurance and quality control are involved in oversight

• Formalize workflows early when it is easier• Get it right up front, it is expensive to go back

Discussion