[OAI-implementers] Scientific journal metadata
Ann Apps
ann.apps@man.ac.uk
Mon, 4 Aug 2003 14:23:26 +0000
Dear All,
People from the digital library and publishing communities within
the Dublin Core community have long been aware that there is no
obvious place to include the bibliographic information for a resource
that is a journal article within its own metadata in simple Dublin
Core. This is really because simple Dublin Core is just that - a core
set of metadata for general resource description. As soon as you
want to describe something more domain-specific you need either
qualifed Dublin Core or even more application-specific metadata.
The discussion about which element to use for bibliographic
metadata has gone on for many years within the DC community.
The final recommendation is to use 'identifier' because this
information identifies the resource. I realise this may look
inconsistent with URIs within Identifier - but this is simple DC we're
talking about where the value of a property is just text (you need
qualified DC to say that it is a URI).
I'm afraid I cannot see that bibliographic information fits into the
semantics of Type (the nature or genre of the content of the
resource) though I suppose you could loosely be saying this is a
journal article.
The problem with everyone making their own choice of element to
include the bibliographic information is a loss of interoperability. It
means you have to understand the semantics of a particular
repository's metadata to process it.
The small amount of development I've done with OAI-PMH has
made me question the value of passing simple DC records. It
seems that the richness of the information often gets dumbed-down
to probably be of little use. Simple DC is really just for basic
interoperability not for passing richer descriptions.
If you were to use qualified DC, there is now a property
dcterms:bibliographicCitation to hold this information. It is a
refinement of Identifier. At present there is no recommendation for
the content of this element beyond simple text. But we are hoping
to define a Dublin Core Structured Value to hold this information in
a more machine-processable way. This has actually been more-or-
less defined for some time and is probably already in use. (See
http://www.dublincore.org/groups/citation/ for more information).
Some of the proposals for the OpenURL Framework may also
provide a solution, and the DCMI Citation working group will be
investigating that.
Best wishes,
Ann
From: Michael Nelson <mln@cs.odu.edu>
To: oai-implementers@oaisrv.nsdl.cornell.edu
Subject: Re: [OAI-implementers] Scientific journal metadata
Date sent: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 20:04:34 -0400 (EDT)
>
> and just for contrast, I put bibliographic information in dc:type and
> use dc:identifier strictly for URIs.
>
> see, for example:
>
> http://ntrs.nasa.gov/?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=
> oai:ltrs.larc.nasa.gov:NASA-aiaa-97-1321
>
> my rationale... reading the descriptions at:
>
> http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/
>
> I can see where bibliographic info could go in dc:identifier. But I
> hate to have both free text & URIs in dc:identifier, and dc:type looks
> pretty good. And you make an argument that the bibliographic info
> tells you a good bit about resource type.
>
> regards,
>
> Michael
>
> On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Simeon Warner wrote:
>
> >
> > For arXiv, I put bibliographic refereces in dc:identifier elements,
> > e.g.
> >
> > <dc:identifier>Prog.Theor.Phys. 101 (1999) 1155-1164</dc:identifier>
> >
> > in
> >
> > http://arXiv.org/oai2?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifie
> > r=oai:arXiv.org:hep-th/9901001
> >
> > I do not think dc:source is correct since that is for a "A Reference
> > to a resource from which the present resource is derived". I assume
> > in your context, as in arXiv's, the bibliographic reference is a
> > reference to the resource that the record describes.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Simeon.
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Jeremy Keeler wrote:
> > > Greetings,
> > >
> > > I'm implementing an OAI repository of scientific journals, but I'm
> > > not sure what to do with the volume, issue and page metadata for
> > > the unqualified dc format. I've read a few debates over this but
> > > I've not seen where it's been solved.
> > >
> > > I had thought about adding a bibiographic record in dc.source, as
> > > in... <dc:source>Journal of Some Research 120(3),
> > > 133-165</dc:source>
> > >
> > > But I can see arguments against this.
> > >
> > > It seems logical to acknowledge that this metadata can not exist
> > > in unqualified dc format, and encourage harvesters to use our
> > > more-specific metadata format. This would mean unqualified dc from
> > > our repository would be fairly useless.
> > >
> > > Is this the accepted way to expose scientific journals through
> > > OAI?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Jeremy Keeler
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Jeremy Keeler
> > > Electronic Publishing | Allen Press, Inc.
> > > mailto:jkeeler@allenpress.com | (800) 627-0327 168
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> >
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> >
>
> ----
> Michael L. Nelson mln@cs.odu.edu http://www.cs.odu.edu/~mln/
> Dept of Computer Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA 23529 +1
> 757 683 6393 +1 757 683 4900 (f)
>
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>
>
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Ann Apps. Senior Analyst - Research & Development, MIMAS,
University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6039 Fax: +44 (0) 0161 275 6040
Email: ann.apps@man.ac.uk WWW: http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
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