Re: Interoperability - subject classification/terminology

From: Hussein Suleman <hussein_at_cs.uct.ac.za>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 08:45:46 +0000

this may be stating the obvious, but why not use sets for the separate
disciplines, aimed at particular service providers? i say it that way
because some disciplines are not well-defined (namely, computer science)
so such archives may want to play ball with multiple service providers
and hence may need different sets.

in any event, for something like physics, a simple set might do the
trick at the source. then, somewhat in keeping with the Kepler model (as
published in DLib a while back), the service provider can provide an
interface for potential data providers to self-register. i know this
sounds dodgy, but think of it as an alternative mechanism for
contribution. either individual users submit individual papers or groups
submit baseURLS - both go through some kind of review and while one
leads to once-off storage, the other leads to periodic harvesting.

what remains a difficult problem, however, is how to recreate the
metadata used by the service provider as its native format. so, for a
typical example, if arXiv classifies items using a specific set
structure, this is certainly not going to be the default for an
institutional archive. does the service provider automatically or
manually reclassify? or does it not allow browsing by categories? in
either event, the quality of the metadata from the perspective of the
service provider may be an impetus for potential users to want to
replicate their effort rather than rely on the automated submission from
their own institutions ... this needs more thought ...

----hussein

Christopher Gutteridge wrote:
> Disciplinary/subject archives vs. Institutional/Organisation/Region based
> archives. This is going to be a key challenge now open archives begin
> to gain momentum.
>
> For example; we are planning a University-wide eprints archive. I am
> concerned that some physisists will want to place their items in both
> the university eprints service AND the arXiv physics archive. They may
> be required to use the university service, but want to use arXiv as it
> is the primary source for their discipline. This is a duplication of
> effort and a potential irritation.
>
> Ultimately, of course, I'd hope that diciplinary archives will be replaced
> with subject-specific OAI service providers harvesting from the institutional
> archives. But there is going to be a very long transition period in which
> the solution evolves from our experience.
>
> What I'm asking is; has anyone given consideration to ways of smoothing
> over this duplication of effort? Possibly some negotiated automated process
> for insitutional archives uploading to the subject archive, or at least
> assisting the author in the process.
>
> This isn't the biggest issue, but it'd be good to address it before it
> becomes more of a problem.
>
> Christopher Gutteridge
> GNU EPrints Head Developer
> http://software.eprints.org/
Received on Thu Mar 27 2003 - 08:45:46 GMT

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