Identifiers and trust:
lessons for data
publishers
Valued Resources: Roles and Responsibilities of
Digital Curators and Publishers
FOURTH BLOOMSBURY CONFERENCE ON EPUBLISHING AND E-PUBLICATIONS,
24 & 25 JUNE 2010
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.0258
Identifiers + Metadata
Services + Community
=
Persistent citation and linking
Registration, Certification, Awareness,
Stewardship: editorial, production, marketing,
access
Open Journal Systems: An example of open source software for journal management and
publishing, J Willinsky. Library Hi Tech. 2005, Vol 23, Issue 4, p 504
doi:10.1108/07378830510636300
Certification of the version of record
Ongoing stewardship of scholarly content
Version of record
• Scholarly Publishing Roundtable
(US House
Committee on Science and Technology/White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy)
• To the fullest extent possible, access
should be to the definitive version of
journal articles — the version of record
(VoR) produced and stewarded by the
publisher.
Versions & Citation
• When is something a new version?
• When does something get a new
identifiers?
• Focus on citation: if something will
change the interpretation of a work it
gets a new identifier
• Must keep older versions - users should
get to what was cited
"together we can create a reality that we all agree
on — the reality we just agreed on…any user can
change any entry, and if enough users agree with
them, it becomes true."
Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new
systems that would give websites a label for
trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable
sources…So I'd be interested in different
organisations labeling websites in different ways.
Industry Problems
• The scholarly pre-publication process is
largely invisible
• The common belief that the publisher’s
job is done on publication of the “final”
version
• A proliferation of versions of content
online that are not stewarded
• Trust metrics have not been established
on the web
CrossMark
•
•
A logo identifying a
publisher certified version
of record
Clicking the logo tells you:
•
•
•
If the copy is publishermaintained and if there
have been corrections
Where the publishermaintained version is
Other metadata the
publisher chooses to
include
Enables Researchers to
• Easily determine if they are looking at a
publisher-maintained version of record
and if not, a link to the publisher version
• Easily ascertain the current status of the
document and if there have been
updates
• Easily access and use any nonbibliographic metadata the publisher
has provided
Enables Publishers to
• Identify the publisher-maintained
version of record
• Emphasize initial certification of the
version of record AND ongoing
stewardship
• Highlight and disseminate corrections in
an industry standard way
• Highlight other (often invisible) steps
taken to ensure the trustworthiness of
the content
Things to think about
• If it’s not online it doesn’t exist
• If it’s not linked it doesn’t exist
• The identifier is only one small piece of
the puzzle
• Any ID must unique, persistent and
discoverable
• Sustainable infrastructure - technical and
social
articles vs data
• CrossRef builds on existing citation
practices established over 350 years
• Reward system firmly established for
articles and article citation
• Not the case for data: social aspects are
much harder than the technical
• Collaboration critical to interlink data and
articles
• Data is different - publishers don’t want it!
Conclusion
• Identifiers are tools to enable services
and are useless without metadata
• Editorial selection and citation practices
are critical
• More work is needed to establish trust
metrics online
• Journals must establish data policies
requiring deposit in appropriate
repositories
Data publishers
must...
• Establish trust through editorial and
production processes
• Certify and steward versions of record
for citation purposes (and keep old
versions!) so researchers get credit
• Create system of persistent, actionable
IDs and authoritative metadata
• Develop a community and services
Ed Pentz
epentz@crossref.org