Reliquary of contacts for: A pragmatic approach to complex citations, closing the provenance gap between IPCC AR6 figures and CMIP6 simulations

Photos and metadadata pannels of a "Reliquary of contacts for: A pragmatic approach to complex citations, closing the provenance gap between IPCC AR6 figures and CMIP6 simulations" produced to support the "A pragmatic approach to complex citations, closing the provenance gap between IPCC AR6 figures and CMIP6 simulations" presentation given at EGU 2024.

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With ever growing abilities to process greater volumes of data the abiiity to sustain the citability and tracability of the underluing source data within outputs such as publications is becoming increasingly challenging. With a range of use-cases, work on how to handle complex citations from the perspective of those producing outputs, journals and those handling the knowledge graph and associated services, is exmaning a how to handle these situations in a sustainable and manageable fashion.

At the European Geophysical Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, 2024, a pragmatic solution using Zenodo to store 'reliquary' objects was presented. The poster presentation demonstrated the use of existing strucutres within a Zenodo object to address the complex citation use-case around figure, the related data and the source datasets related to the IPCC's AR5 figure data. I.e. how to utulise the existing constructs of a Zenodo item and the range of available metadata fields to give an off-the-shelf solution to allow tracability to the specific datasets used (via their Handle identifiers) and citability of the higher level, DOI-ed dataset collections within which the specific Handle-ed datasets were selected from. Additionally, the connectivity between these two levels of PID objects was also captured within the stored files around which the rich metata was captured.

The concept of a complex citation 'reliquary' as a metadtata rich object, acting as a referencable nexus in the knowledge graph has been put forth as a solution to the complex citation challenge. It borrows the concept from its historical use, denoting a container or shrine, often richly embellished, for sacred relics (e.g. saints bones, artefacts etc). In the same way here we have both the rich metadata 'container' around the specific details (the 'bones in the box', with their preserved connectivity).

However, the term 'reliquary' is often a hard one to convey, being somewhat of an obscure term (likewise the term 'nexus' may also be one lacking wider recogniton). Thus, to aid the discussions around the presentation by Pascoe et al. (2024) at the EGU 2023 General Assembly, a physical representation of a metadata reliquary object was produced.

The purpose of this object was two fold:

 - The first was to show how the reliquary container itself is metadata rich, detailing through the use of ORCIDS, RORs and a DOI, references to external items, complemented by further metadata concerning the specifics of the reliquary's own metadata (its title and the credit for the artist that created it). Futher more, the relationship between the reliquary and those referenced parties/objects was also captured. The contents were also used to demonstrate the importance of making the contents useful for onward users (in this case contact details on business cards).
 - The second, and for the funder of this piece, arguably the most important aspect was a degree of outreach this provided, both to engage the audience of Pascoe et al (2024), and directly to the artist to demonstrate the importance of this work to the international research data management community and overall to aid engagemeng with the funder's work.

This resource is provided here as a repository of images of the reliquary itself and in context at the EGU 2024 event as a potential resource others may use to aid further discussions around the use of reliquaries with regards to complex citations. The slides provided of the reliquary box labels are also provided with some annotation to further expand on the metadata aspects of their content.