Event Notifications in Value-Adding Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time, decentralized system for linking scholarly artifacts using Linked Data Notifications, enhancing the immediacy and interoperability of research linkages in scholarly communication.

Contribution

It proposes the Event Notifications in Value-Adding Networks specification for real-time artifact lifecycle updates and demonstrates its application in distributing scholarly links across repositories.

Findings

Confirmed the potential of real-time link distribution

Established a framework for decentralized scholarly networks

Validated the approach with a Belgian repositories experiment

Abstract

Linkages between research outputs are crucial in the scholarly knowledge graph. They include online citations, but also links between versions that differ according to various dimensions and links to resources that were used to arrive at research results. In current scholarly communication systems this information is only made available post factum and is obtained via elaborate batch processing. In this paper we report on work aimed at making linkages available in real-time, in which an alternative, decentralised scholarly communication network is considered that consists of interacting data nodes that host artifacts and service nodes that add value to artifacts. The first result of this work, the "Event Notifications in Value-Adding Networks" specification, details interoperability requirements for the exchange of real-time life-cycle information pertaining to artifacts using Linked Data Notifications. In an experiment, we applied our specification to one particular use-case: distributing Scholix data-literature links to a network of Belgian institutional repositories by a national service node. The results of our experiment confirm the potential of our approach and provide a framework to create a network of interacting nodes implementing the core scholarly functions (registration, certification, awareness and archiving) in a decentralized and decoupled way.