42nd Street paper

1. Status

   1. This document is called the “42nd Street paper” because its initial version was written on 2002/12/14 by Thomas Krichel, for submission to a meeting with Eberhard R. Hilf in a cafee on Manhattan’s 42nd street.
   2. This is the version as of 2003-06-14.

2. General principles

   1. Conventional digital libraries are concerned with accumulation of digital document contents and the maintenance of query facilities on these contents by users interested in access to documents. This is the traditional business model.
   2. Academic digital libraries have essentially followed this model but there are some subtle variations. First, the RePEc project, and later the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) have conceived a separation between data providers and service providers where the two functions of digital libraries can be conducted by a set of agents with limited coordination. This has the advantage to spread the workload of the provision of a digital library between a number of agents.
   3. The key assumption of this paper is that scholarly communication is author-driven rather than reader-driven.  That is, future changes in the scholarly communication system can only be implemented if the authors are “incentivized” to make a change. User-centered digital libraries, be they of the traditional variety or OAI-enhanced, will make little impact.

3. Implementation

   1. Institute for Science Networking Oldenburg GmbH at the Carl von Ossietzky University, ISN, will create and test a new Physics Author and Institution Service PAIS as part of PhyNet.  PAIS will be contributor-lead service.  PAIS will adopt the AMF descriptive model, as an initial descriptive model, test it and try to adapt, implement and evaluate it.
   2. As such, it will aim to provide authoritative data describing all Physics institutions, publication channels, and authors involved in Physics in a professional capacity, and physics documents.  For this a database is set up, where the PAIS information is stored. The database will be referred to as the PAIS dataset.
   3. In the data supplied to PAIS, personal and organizational data appears as an annex data to the document data. One central aim of the collection effort will be to identify descriptions of the same person or organization, or channel.
   4. Nisa Bakkalbasi and Thomas Krichel will donate journal information for the most important journals in Physics. This data is made available at http://wotan.liu.edu/battersea/data/battersea.amf.xml. The records are currently identified in a “CiteBase” namespace until such time as ISN inform Bakkabasi and Krichel about the required structure of handles.
   5. More generally, ISN will propose an identifier strategy. This will contain a syntax proposal and a proposal on how the identifiers are being assigned. Assignment proposals only apply to the documnent and institutional data, because Bakkaslbasi and Krichel donate the journal data.
   6. A robot has been designed and set up by Svend Age Biehs of ISN. It extract from the numerous Physics sites as listed in PhysDep, institute and department data to be used for the PAIS services. The quality of the data needs to be tested. The data may need to be supplemented by manually collected data. ACIS funds may be used to accomplish this through a consultant.
   7. ISN will format the document metadata that they have collected through OAI. They will associate a handle with each document, in compliance with the issued identifier strategy and will provide AMF metadata records.
   8. ISN will seek to produce an appropriate identification strategy for the four types of records in the PAIS dataset.  An example for an emerging strategy is the Geneva protocol for the rclis collection.
   9. PAIS will centrally run its own registration service for Physics organizations. This may comprise, without limitation
      • physics departments in universities
      • departments at specialized research centers
      • scholarly societies.
   10. The registration of authors will be done through the ACIS, software.  In phase 1, the software will take document and organizational data that is formatted in AMF, and build a web interface that will allow persons to associate with works that they have written and institutions which they have been affiliated with.  The ACIS software will write a personal record that formatted in AMF.
   11. In later phases, PAIS will deliver to authors some or all of the following
       1. Number of hits to their papers,
       2. Number of entries in PhysNet
       3. Number of hits and cites in Citebase
       4. Number of index-file hits in papers of others.

4. Collaboration and sustainability

   1. At a future session of the Action Committee of Publication and Scientific Communication the new services will be presented to gain approval to be included into the EPS-vetted service of PhysNet.
   2. The institutional, personal and channel records will be made free available, through an OAI gateway.  Hopefully Citebase and arXiv will use them.
   3. There will be a PhysNet list sponsored by PAIS, which Citebase, arXiv should be invited to join.