Scholix

While there are clear benefits to literature and data linking, in practice these links are difficult to find or share. The main reason for this is that there is no universal way of exchanging link information between databases and systems which hold this information. Instead, there are different agreements and technical frameworks for exchanging link information between the different partners and systems which hold this information. Scholix is short for Scholarly Link Exchange and it aims to address this problem by providing an overarching framework for existing technical initiatives that individually address parts of the overall problem that is hindering better linking between data and literature. Its goal is to improve the links between scholarly literature and research data as well as between datasets, thereby making it easier to discover, interpret and reuse scholarly information. Scholix is global in scope and is an initiative of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the World Data System (WDS).

The Scholix model

The Scholix initiative provides a conceptual model and an information model. The conceptual model is about the link between two objects, such as a journal article and the underpinning data. Rather than describing in detail the properties of each of the two objects, the conceptual model focuses on the relationship between the objects. It also enables a record of who asserted the link and who made the link available. The information model provides the detail of the conceptual model. It specifies what information is needed in what is called a Link Information Package. This includes what elements of the conceptual model are mandatory fields (publishing date and link publisher) and optional fields (various). Scholix does not mandate how to format and exchange a Link Information Package. Therefore information can be formatted and exchanged potentially using a variety of models and protocols such as JSON, XML or RDF formats and OAI-PMH, RESTful or SPARQL protocols. For further information, see Scholix Metadata Schema for Exchange of Scholarly Communication Links.

Research Data Australia is a Scholix hub

The Research Data Australia Registry functions as a Scholix hub, enabling contributor metadata records containing connections between data collections and related publications, to be mapped to the Scholix Framework’s Information Model. These records, or “Link Information Packages”, are then made available to other Scholix hub partners, including ScholeXplorer, for harvest from an OAI-PMH endpoint.

For Research Data Australia contributors, ensure that your collection metadata includes a link to the corresponding publication(s) and the relevant DOI (important). These metadata records are then harvested into Research Data Australia and made available as Scholix-compliant links to any Scholix hub. For some Research Data Australia contributors, this may require minor optimisations to your metadata for the dataset and the related publications. For more information see: RIF-CS to Scholix crosswalk.

Example RIF-CS XML for a linked publication suitable for Scholix transformation

<relatedInfo type="publication">
<identifier type="doi">10.1057/jphp.2010.49</identifier>
<relation type=”isReferencedBy”/>
<title>Public perceptions of pandemic influenza resource allocation: A deliberative forum using Grid/Group analysis</title>
</relatedInfo>