Towards an Open Infrastructure for Relating Scholarly Assets

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Information Science
• Digital Libraries
• Scholarly Communication

Background:

• Discovering relationships between scholarly assets online is difficult due to metadata and provenance challenges.
• Connecting digital entities in a community-accessible chain of provenance is complex.
• Existing platforms often lack a unified approach to managing scholarly asset relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a framework and tools for expressing scholarly asset relationships in a standard and open manner.
• To demonstrate the framework's utility in discovering new knowledge across cohort studies.
• To create a decentralized infrastructure for managing scholarly asset provenance and connections.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing Research Objects for aggregating scholarly assets.
• Employing distributed databases for data storage.
• Implementing distributed ledgers for tracking provenance.
• Designing a framework that leverages existing resources and platforms through natural partnerships.

Main Results:

• A functional framework and tools for expressing scholarly asset relationships have been developed.
• Use-cases illustrate the discovery of new knowledge across cohort studies using the framework.
• The proposed infrastructure supports diverse users, including system administrators and researchers.
• The system avoids reliance on a single central platform, promoting a distributed approach.

Conclusions:

• The developed framework provides a standard and open method for managing scholarly asset relationships and provenance.
• This decentralized approach enhances knowledge discovery and collaboration across research communities.
• The infrastructure is scalable and adaptable, supporting a wide range of users and applications.