From eprint archives to open archives and OAI: the Open Citation project

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From eprint archives to open archives and OAI
the Open Citation project

• By The Open Citation Project team
• Presented by Steve Hitchcock, Southampton
  University
• These slides prepared for the JISC/NSF Digital
  Libraries Initiative (DLI) All Projects Meeting,
  Edinburgh, 24-25th June 2002
• OpCit is a joint JISC-NSF
• International Digital Libraries Project 1999-2002

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About this presentation

• The aim is to
• Report progress since Stratford All-Projects
  meeting in 2000
• Demonstrate new services developed by the
  project
• Highlight the role of the project in the Open
  Archives Initiative
• Outline key tasks remaining
• Look beyond the Open Citation Project

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Recap 1 principal partners

• Southampton University, IAM (Intelligence,
  Agents, Multimedia) Research Group, PI Stevan
  Harnad
• Citation-ranked search, EPrints.org, user surveys
• Cornell University, Digital Library Research
  Group, PI Carl Lagoze
• Architecture for reference linking, experiments
  with the ACM Digital Library and D-Lib magazine,
  OAI technical support center
• arXiv.org, Paul Ginsparg
• Now based at Cornell University. Still the
  largest archive of freely accessible
  author-deposited scientific papers

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The Open Citation Project deliverables

• The Open Citation Project (OpCit) is developing
  software and services to support the Open
  Archives Initiative (OAI). OpCit can help OAI
  data providers and service providers
• Citebase citation-ranked search
• EPrints.org software free software to build and
  manage OAI-compliant eprint archives
• API for reference linking, an interface on which
  reference linking applications can be built

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Recap 2 last time at Stratford

• Reference links on pdf copies of papers

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Citebase, a new interface to the scholarly
literature

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Citebase, a citation-ranked search engine

• http//citebase.eprints.org/
• Google for the refereed literature
• Citebase is based on a citation database
• Harvests metadata using OAI-PMH
• Extracts reference lists from arXiv papers
• Provides impact (and other)-ranked search based
  on reference data
• Re-exports metadata references

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Evaluating Citebase

• http//citebase.eprints.org/survey/
• The evaluation is aimed at users of arXiv, and
  all others who use bibliographic services to
  access the refereed journal literature. You can
  contribute (June-July 2002) using the form linked
  above.
• Aims of the evaluation
• Discover the users awareness of related
  services
• Assess usability with a practical exercise
• Invite the users views on the main features
• Assess the level of user satisfaction with the
  service

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Citebase further developments

• OpenURL-enabled pointing Citebase links at
  library and journal services
• Google interface using DP9 getting Citebase
  results, and open archives, into Google
• Metadata format and XML schema for citations
  making citation metadata harvestable via OAI-PMH.
  Possible formats include
• Academic Metadata Format a local profile
  format, some collaborative experiments performed
  within OpCit
• OpenURL metadata, moving towards NISO
  standardisation

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Recap 3 API for reference linking

• getLinkedText contents of the paper,
  reference-linked plus lots of metadata for the
  paper
• getReferenceList this papers references
  getCurrentCitationList the list of
  works citing this paper (best knowledge)
• getMyData metadata for this paper

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Surrogates in the API

• Based on an automatic analysis of the work, a
  surrogate for a scholarly work (and of other
  works, for citations), consists of the following
  three XML files
• Bibliographic data for the scholarly work
• References contained in that work, and their
  contexts within the full text
• Citations of that work

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API evaluation

• API tested on D-Lib Magazine and the ACM Digital
  Library. Try demo at http//cs-tr.cs.cornell.edu/R
  efLinkingDemo/
• Performance (in terms of accuracy of data
  extracted)
• Reference analysis 86.7
• Item analysis (bib data, contexts, and
  references for a given paper) 82.42
• Implementability
• Simple interface Surrogate s new Surrogate
  (some-url)
• Portable written in Java, has run in Solaris,
  Win2K, and NT4
• Installation API source code plus public domain
  jar files

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EPrints.org software

• http//www.eprints.org/
• Generates eprint archives that are compliant with
  the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for
  Metadata Harvesting. EPrints is free (GPL)
  software. It is aimed at organisations and
  communities.
• EPrints v. 2.0 released February 2002 (now on v.
  2.0.1, which fixes bugs and typos). Features
• Internationalised metadata stored as Unicode
• Support for multiple archives on one server
• Improved user interface

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OpCit and OAI

• OAI Aggregator (Celestial) collecting and
  caching the results from OAI data providers to
  improve the efficiency of data harvesting
  http//celestial.eprints.org
• OAI infrastructure proxies, caches, gateways.
  Improve interoperability, scalability and
  reliability of OAI services. Joint work with Old
  Dominion University, see paper http//arxiv.org/ab
  s/cs.DL/0205071
• OAI Registration and Validation performed at
  Cornell http//www.openarchives.org/Register/Brows
  eSites.pl

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EPrints and OAI

• EPrints feeds repository URLs straight into the
  OAI registration process (if so desired by the
  EPrints administrator)
• A scan of the OAI database of registered sites
  shows many sites use EPrints software to create
  repositories

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A repository administrators view of OAI

• As we have introduced our repository to our
  faculty and staff, we have emphasized the point
  that because they would be depositing their
  material in an OAI-compliant archive, it would
  automatically and painlessly be discoverable from
  various other points around the globe. Luckily,
  we were right.
• Roy Tennant, eScholarship, California Digital
  Library, June 2002 http//www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/har
  nad/Hypermail/Amsci/2085.html

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OpCit user surveys and data mining

• Maximising impact
  Maximising access
• Results from Mining the Social Life of an Eprint
  Archive http//opcit.eprints.org/tdb198/opcit/
• When interoperability is not enough show authors
  what users do when open access services are
  available

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Key project tasks remaining

• OpCit formally ends in September 2002. Before
  then
• Evaluation and reporting of the results
• Programmer's guide to using the API
• Journal and conference papers
• Final reports to JISC and NSF

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Beyond OpCit

• Beyond the project, the following will continue
  to be developed
• Citebase
• EPrints.org
• OAI
• and variously applied in the JISC FAIR
  programme (start 2002)
• http//www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/development/programmes/
  fair.html
• Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and
  Disclosure (lead institution Southampton
  University)
• e-prints UK (RDN, Kings College London)
  citation analysis service for eprints database
• Machine-readable rights metadata (Loughborough
  University)

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What we have achieved what we have learned

• OAI is gathering momentum
• Software for building OAI repositories is
  available
• Institutional archives are being created, but
  need to be filled by authors
• Attracting authors requires evidence of services
  that will improve the visibility and impact of
  their works
• Citation-ranked search and reference linking are
  examples of OAI services that do this
• The infrastructure supporting OAI services
  continues to be enhanced
• Resource discovery and current awareness are
  exemplar OAI services now. Future services may be
  preservation management, and personalization

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Credits

• Other contributors to the project include
• Technical development at Southampton is directed
  by Les Carr
• Research at Cornell by Donna Bergmark
• EPrints.org software is being developed by Chris
  Gutteridge
• Citebase is produced and managed by Tim Brody
• Project manager is Steve Hitchcock
• A copy of these slides can be found on the OpCit
  Web site
• http//opcit.eprints.org/. Look for Papers and
  Presentations
• Contact Steve Hitchcock sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk