Collaborative Initiatives Working to Improve Metadata Management
Since the launch of the State of Scholarly Metadata report in 2023, the scholarly communications community has continued to invest in efforts to support data stewardship and promote the use of PIDs and high-quality metadata. Through direct input from the community, CCC identified numerous initiatives that aim to improve metadata management across the research lifecycle. There are many exciting efforts underway and this list highlights just some of them and the progress that they have made toward addressing the data challenges identified in the initial report.
Africa PID Alliance
The Africa PID Alliance is part of the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC-AFRICA) based at the University of Nairobi. The Africa PID Alliance’s mission is to secure the future of African Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Heritage. The Alliance is working to support scientists and inventors to disseminate and commercialize their research innovations through the digitization of research outputs in Africa, using PIDs.
How will this help?
Improves awareness of and access to knowledge and metadata by producing and assigning PIDs to research outputs, including indigenous knowledge, cultural artifacts, and patent metadata in Africa.ARK-CAICYT
The ARK-CAICYT is a service platform for assigning persistent identifiers developed by the CAICYT (Argentine Center for Scientific and Technological Information) based on the ARK (Archival Resource Key) that works equivalently to the DOI but at no cost for Argentine scientific journals.
How will this help?
Provides flexible alternative for assigning persistent identifiers to digital objects associated with scientific research being produced from Argentina. In turn, this research becomes easier to search, discover, and cite.BISG/ISNI Working Group
The Book Industry Study Group has formed a cross-stakeholder working group to support the adoption of ISNI in the US book market.
How will this help?
Expanding the use of ISNI, an existing ISO standard, will help publishers and booksellers disambiguate authors, contributors, and imprints across the metadata supply chain, improving workflows for all stakeholders in the book industry.CCC’s RightsLink for Scientific Communications
CCC’s RightsLink for Scientific Communications is an OA workflow solution trusted by dozens of independent publishers and societies, facilitating publisher agreements with more than 2,000 institutions and funders in nearly 70 countries.
Examples of ways RightsLink supports metadata management across the research lifecycle include:
- An API enabling any manuscript submission system used by participating publishers to communicate potential sources of OA funding to authors at submission. Currently, integration partners Aries Systems and eJournal Press (Wiley Partner Solutions) are using the API.
- New functionality for RightsLink publishers (who also have the Ringgold Identify Database) to add precision to their agreement management by excluding particular entities in the Ringgold ID hierarchy. For example, university hospitals that are not included in a deal between a publisher and a university.
- Consolidated institutional reporting in RightsLink’s own portal as well as connectors to other dashboard providers, including OA Switchboard. This integration enables participating publishers to surface a robust set of financial transaction data in the standard publication (P1) messaging to participating institutions, consortia, and funders.
How will this help?
Through integrations and continuous development to better support data-driven workflows, RightsLink helps the industry improve data quality, strengthen OA agreement management, and enhance system interoperability.DLF Metadata Assessment Working Group
The DLF Metadata Assessment Working Group was formed under the Metadata 20/20 initiative. This group builds guidelines, best practices, tools, and workflows around the evaluation and assessment of metadata used by and for digital libraries and repositories.
How will this help?
More effective management of the metadata associated with digital collections improves the discoverability of those collections.NISO CREC Recommendations
The NISO Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) Working Group wrote a draft recommendation for best practices for metadata transfer and display for retractions, removals, and expressions of concern. The recommendations address necessary processes for all involved stakeholders.
How will this help?
Continued citation of retracted articles is a threat to research integrity. Creation of a standard practice for timely information sharing will enable publishers to more easily flag and communicate potential issues with published papers.
Research Data Alliance
The Research Data Alliance provides an international community space where interested parties can work on groups that develop and implement data infrastructure that promotes data-sharing and data-driven research. Members can join working groups, interest groups, and communities of practice, on a variety of topics including PIDs and metadata.
How will this help?
The output of RDA groups solves data-sharing problems and drives the adoption of infrastructure environments that enable data sharing, exchange, and interoperability.STM Integrity Hub
The STM Integrity Hub offers a holistic approach to detect research-integrity-offending manuscripts through a combination of shared data and experiences, and by harnessing technological innovation. STM has recently added a Researcher Identity Task & Finish Group, which is evaluating current systems for researcher identity verification, and plans to create a best practices guide for publishers and service providers.
How will this help?
Provides publishers with the ability to effectively respond to potential research integrity issues prior to manuscript publication.Subject Specific Data Initiatives
Subject-specific standards and data initiatives include:
TDWG - Biodiversity Information Standards: A non-profit organization and a community dedicated to developing biodiversity information standards.
Earth Science Information Partners: A community of partner organizations and volunteers working together to meet environmental data challenges and identify opportunities to expand, improve, and innovate across Earth science disciplines.
How will this help?
Creating and promoting subject specific data and metadata standards encourages researchers to apply more metadata to research outputs making it more relevant and useful for their particular field of study. Increasing the uptake of metadata use will make research data more findable, supporting dissemination, and more reproducible, supporting research integrity.Thoth Open Metadata
Thoth is an open metadata management and dissemination platform, and a non-profit CIC registered in the UK. Thoth was developed in the context of the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project funded by UKRI and the Arcadia Fund. Thoth develops services to support open access book publishers with the creation, distribution and integration of metadata.
How will this help?
Focusing on the creation, curation, and dissemination of high-quality metadata records will make open access books more discoverable and widely distributed.United2Act
United2Act is a group dedicated to addressing paper mills in scholarly publishing, with five areas of focus including improvement of post-publication corrections and development of trust markers leveraging identity verification.
How will this help?
Improved author metadata and increased utilization of PIDs helps to more accurately identify authors and uncover bad actors, conflicts of interest and other ethical issues. With this information, publishers and institutions can conduct investigations and take necessary actions in a timely manner to uphold the integrity of scholarly research.Other Initiatives
- The Joint Statement on Research Data aims to accelerate the adoption of best practices related to data citation and encourage further development of critical policies in collaboration with a wide group of stakeholders.
- The NISO US National PID Strategy Working Group aims to develop a standard for a United States national PID strategy in order to increase the adoption of PIDs in scholarly communications and open research.
- The Make Data Count Initiative promotes open data metrics to enable the evaluation and reward of research data reuse and impact.
- NISO Open Access Business Processes (OABP) Working Group aims to address the infrastructure supporting OA content by helping stakeholders in scholarly communications to track, assess, and report on OA publications, authors, and funding more easily.
- The OA Switchboard’s Data Quality Challenge is a community initiative to standardize information provided by publishers, allowing stakeholders to consolidate and process data efficiently.
- RAISE supports open data for the EOSC research community by providing the infrastructure for a distributed crowdsourced data processing system.
- Sensus Impact is a publicly available platform that provides reporting on the impact and reach of funded research looking at article downloads, alternative metrics, and citations.
