The Role of Open Metadata in the SSH Scholarly Communication – Current Challenges in the Context of the TRIPLE Project

In this presentation we will outline current challenges for SSH publications’ metadata based on the experiences of metadata aggregation and enrichment realised within the TRIPLE and discuss the overarching challenges for SSH metadata
aggregation in the current data ecosystem. We will focus on a limited number of metadata categories, namely persistent identifiers, abstracts, keywords and citations, and for those categories, present a quality assessment showcasing the most crucial
and overarching challenges for the aggregation process. These challenges include 1. limitations of providers’ metadata quality and interoperability of their services, 2. dispersion of metadata resources and its impact on the ability to properly monitor and shape the aggregation scope, 3. defining the roles of local and aggregator’s metadata for the document’s content description. We will propose
an approach to these challenges that is twofold.

 On the one hand, it has to do with developing and maintaining collaborations with initiatives such as OpenAbstracts, OpenCitations, and Dublin Core Working Groups for knowledge exchange that would lead to new, state-of-the-art technological implementations for crucial parts of aggregation and enrichment pipelines. On the other hand, in a complex data ecosystem, the SSH metadata aggregator needs to propose and develop its own domain specific technological solutions. For the future of GoTriple, we argue, it is critical to offer its output in a way that is technologically flexible and interoperable with other service providers (especially other key aggregators and providers) and satisfies the current demand for databased analysis.