A literature review of scholarly communications metadata

Abstract

The purpose of this literature review is to identify the challenges, opportunities, and gaps in knowledge with regard to the use of metadata in scholarly communications. This paper compiles and interprets literature in sections based on the professional groups, or stakeholders, within scholarly communications metadata: researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, service providers, and data curators. It then ends with a 'bird's eye view' of the metadata supply chain which presents the network of relationships and interdependencies between stakeholders. This paper seeks to lay the groundwork for new approaches to present problems in scholarly communications metadata. KeywordsScholarly communication, metadata, metadata supply chain, research data management, Metadata 2020 ‡ § | ¶ # This review assumes at least a basic knowledge of how metadata records are created, shared, and used. Nevertheless, two core terms are defined below to frame the discussion.Scholarly communication is the process by which research is conducted, transformed into content, and distributed to a wider audience. The majority of the resources featured in this literature review are concerned with the physical and life sciences. The implications of this review, however, can be extended in many cases to the social sciences and humanities which have the same need to describe and share scholarly works. The majority of resources also treat the published journal article as the primary form of scholarly output, though emerging literature increasingly focuses on research data and the research process as opposed to finalized articles.Metadata in this context is the information that accompanies the various stages and outputs of research. Common to most scholarly research are metadata elements such as author, date, title, subject, language, and standard identifier. In the case of research data, metadata describes specialized aspects such as the geographic location where the data was collected, the name and identifier of the research funder, the institutional affiliation of the researchers, contributors such as editors and data curators, or the number of the grant award funding the research (DataCite Metadata Working Group 2016). Metadata for journal article includes identifiers such as the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN, the numeric identifier assigned to journals), volume, issue, page numbers, or epub identifier. In the case of monographs (books), specialized metadata includes the International Standard Book Number (ISBN), title, page number, and author of individual chapters. These and other metadata elements are essential for disseminating research outputs. Metadata gives proper credit to research funders, ensures that research can be reproduced, facilitates others in finding research, allows authors to build a portfolio, and measures the scholarly impact of an article. StakeholdersPublishers, service providers, researchers, funders, librarians, and data curators are the stakeholders of metadata in scholarly communication. The relationships ...

An international, multi-stakeholder survey about metadata awareness, knowledge, and use in scholarly communications

“…The concept of "metadata" is highly central and well-known in the library sector -librarians are primarily curators, custodians, and consumers of metadata -so the comparatively high engagement and interest of this group was not surprising. Moreover, research on metadata for scholarly communications is quite dominated by the library and information sector, which was also reflected in the literature review by Gregg, et al (Gregg 2019).…”

“…In 2019, the participants of the Metadata 2020 initiative published a review that examined the published literature regarding the use of metadata in scholarly communications (Gregg 2019). The aim of this literature review was to address "...a need for a comprehensive review of the challenges, opportunities, and gaps with metadata in scholarly communications with the aim that it would foster further conversations among the stakeholders involved."…”

“…The aim of this literature review was to address "...a need for a comprehensive review of the challenges, opportunities, and gaps with metadata in scholarly communications with the aim that it would foster further conversations among the stakeholders involved." (Gregg 2019) Many challenges, gaps and opportunities were revealed. This survey project follows the review's structure, asking questions of similar stakeholder groups to gain additional insights into metadata knowledge, use, standards, practices and other factors that not only describe the present landscape, but point to potentially other opportunities to improve industry practices.…”

Methods & Proposal for Metadata Guiding Principles for Scholarly Communications

“…They may serve to stimulate further work and development of ideas and workflows in the scholarly ecosystem if framed as guidance on the "metadata supply chain." Gregg et al (2019) These principles address not only metadata creation, but also their curation and custodianship in order to keep it optimally useful for as long as possible. The principles are in accord with other Metadata 2020 project work by taking perspectives from and informing other aspects of metadata improvement.…”

Metadata: The accelerant we need

“…In this final year of the initiative, it is worth reviewing those resources here. A literature review [21,22] nicely summarizes the roles and challenges within each community and may be considered in the context of a great variety of existing best practices [23] that were collected near the start of the initiative, along with use cases gathered over the past few years. Cross-community personas [24] were developed from interviews, surveys and community group discussions to help illustrate and validate the resources provided, particularly the Metadata 2020 Principles [4] and Best Practices [25].…”