Workshop Authority Files

Jisc Digital Festival 11-12 March Birmingham

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9.30• Introduction Knowledge Exchange• Authority Files

– from library silo to web of data– why/how beneficial to research– four use cases– CRIS transforms into CRIS?

• Opinion poll and discussion

10.10• Introduction CASRAI• Work on Authority Files

10.25• Wrap up & close

Programme

- Bas Cordewener

- Leo Waaijers, Maurits de Graaf

- David Baker

- Verena Weigert

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4

Authority files

signposts

library silos

Research Information

break out of

become

of

KE publication

Web of Documents/Web of Data

via

us

ing

SPARQL

Our insights

Authority Files or ‘Controlled Vocabularies’ are lists

• of entities or ‘things’ (people, publications, journals, data sets, organisations, repositories, etc.)

• that are uniquely identified by a number (identifiers such as ORCID for re-searchers, DOI for publications, ISBN for books, ISNI for organisations, etc.)

• containing information to characterise and qualify the entities (e.g. if a journal is Open Access, which researcher contributed to a specific project, which funder financed that project, etc.)

• and are authoritative (maintained by an expert organisation, registry agent, etc.; or authoritative in itself being widely recognised, widely used by significant audiences, etc.

‘Crosswalking’ between Authority Files creates value:

• Using these lists, it becomes possible to link entities via their unique identifiers and by these combinations provide new or enriched information; e.g. what publications link (via DOI and ORCID) to a specific project.

• This so called ‘crosswalking’ helps stakeholders in the research community to combine information, to gain insight, and inform funding and policy decisions regarding the research.

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Why?

A growing volume and impact of research results necessitate more transparancy and individual, organisational and national profiling.

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Benefits of Authority Files • Discovery: Authority files are essential in discovery of research

information by bridging sources that are not interoperable nor linked.

• Trust and reliability: Authority files support reliable and trusted identification of key elements in research information.

• Accountability: Authority files support the ability to track, report and measure aspects like funding, research output, and impact. Funders can track the research output resulting from their funding.

• Transactional efficiency: Authority Files help to avoid the need to re-key data many times and support data exchange. This benefits all stakeholders.

• New knowledge: Authority files greatly facilitate the ability to draw corre-lations across data and support analytics and decision making in the management of research.

Four use cases

• Where to publish reliably research data?Needs new authority file for repositories

• How is Open Access evolving?Needs enhancement of existing authority file for journals

• Making German culture Web compliantNeeds integration of existing authority files

• Analyses and new ‘business’ information CRIS = Current Research Information Systems

That Robbert and André are authors with ISO Name Identifiers x and y: ISNI database (incl. ORCID) at global level

ISNI: <ISNI: x is_a Author>That University ABC is a University with ISNI:z

ISNI: <ISNI:z is_a Organisation>That Robbert (ISNI:x) and André (ISNI:y) have a working relation to University ABC (ISNI:z): HR-database at University

HR@UniversityABC: <ISNI:z has_employee ISNI:x>That University ABC has different departments

HR@UniversityABC: <department:n is_a department>That the departments of University ABC are in a specific Research Area

HR@UniversityABC: <department:n is_research_area NOD:n>Who work in these departments

HR@UniversityABC: <ISNI:n works_in department:n>What authors (ISNI) have contributed to which publications (DOI): DOI database at global level

DOI: <DOI:n has_author ISNI:n>What Journals there are: ISSN database at global level;

ISSN: <ISSN:n is_a ScientificJournal>What publications (DOI) belong to what journals (ISSN): DOI database at global level;

DOI: <DOI:n published_in ISSN:n>When a publication (DOI) has been published: DOI database at global level;

DOI: <DOI:n published_on w3c:date:n>What the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) for each Journal (ISSN): CWTS database at global level;

CWTS: <ISSN:n has_a JIF:CWTS:n>What the defined Research Areas are. (on a national level, since the reporting in this case is a national matter): NOD (Nederlandse Onderzoeksdatabase) at national level; In our case

NOD: <NOD:PopularScience is_a ResearchArea>What the definition is for an A-class journal is per Research Area, by defining a minimal Journal Impact Factor for each Research Area (in this case Popular Science): VSNU at national level.;VSNU:A-ClassDefinition: <NOD:PopularScience has_minimal JIF:CWTS:n>

CRIS = Crosswalk Research Information Service?

Opinion poll: ‘yes’ or ‘no’Think great, start small

Statement 1My institution should start tomorrow creating an ORCID on behalf of every member of the academic staff who hasn’t one.

Statement 2Organisations in the scholarly world should mandate ISNIs as organisational identifiers for their output.

Statement 3My institution would welcome clinics on cross-walking for CRIS managers.

Statement 4My CRIS should not start migrating data to Open Linked Data format (= RDF triples) soon.

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10.10• Introduction CASRAI• Work on Authority Files

10.25• Wrap up & close

Programme

- David Baker

- Verena Weigert

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10.25• Wrap up & close

Programme

- Verena Weigert