In this paper we present an ecosystem for the lightweight exchange of publication metadata based on the principles of Web 2.0. At the heart of this ecosystem, semantically enriched RSS feeds are used for dissemination. These feeds are complemented by services for creation and aggregation, as well as widgets for retrieval and visualization of publication metadata. In two scenarios, we show how these publication feeds can benefit institutions, researchers, and the TEL community. We then present the formats, services, and widgets developed for the bootstrapping of the ecosystem. We conclude with an outline of the integration of publication feeds with the STELLAR Network of Excellence1 and an outlook on future developments.
Recently, developments under the paradigm of Science 2.0 have received a lot of
attention [
In this paper we present an ecosystem for the exchange of publication data based
on existing Web 2.0 infrastructure. At the heart of this ecosystem, semantically
enriched feeds based on the popular RSS format [
To facilitate the opening of institutional archives, easy-to-use tools are needed.
Web services are especially apt for this, since they are the cornerstone of Web 2.0,
allowing for loosely coupled systems and simple syndication [
This paper consists of three sections. At first, we introduce two scenarios for the usage of publication feeds in research from a personal and an organizational perspective. Then, we present the pillars of the ecosystem, namely the adapted BuRST format, a suite of web services for feed producers, and several widgets for feed consumers. Finally, we conclude with an overview of the integration of the ecosystem into the STELLAR Network of Excellence and an outlook on future developments. 2
In the following section we present two scenarios which illustrate the benefits of the presented ecosystem. These scenarios emphasize on lightweight dissemination, visualization, and navigation of semantically-enriched scientific publication feeds in the style of Web 2.0. 2.1
Sandra is a supervisor at a TEL research institution dedicated to professional learning. She is responsible for collecting the publications of her group. Therefore, her assistants keep a BibTeX file of their publication metadata, which is periodically uploaded to a common server. Sandra is interested in a wider dissemination of this data, but unfortunately she cannot get her assistants to enter the publication data over and over again into other repositories. Hence, she is looking for a way to automate dissemination. Since publication data is already available in several BibTex files, she uses a dedicated BibTeX converter to convert these files into publication feeds. The resulting individual feeds are then merged into a single feed with the help of the Publication Feed Merger. Due to the fact that there are also publications not related to TEL in the feed, a Publication Feed Filter is applied. Sandra now publishes this feed so that all interested parties that support the BuRST format can subscribe to it. 2.2
Kurt is an early-career researcher interested in professional learning. He wants to find out about the most influential publications, recently trending topics, and interesting conferences in the field. Therefore, he joins a special interest group dedicated to professional learning on a social networking platform. Sandra and other users have already added their institutions' publication feeds to this group. The individual publications are presented as blog posts, which can be rated and commented on. Kurt now has an overview of the top rated publications and the discussions revolving around them.
Kurt then opens the "Publication Visualization" widget from within the special interest group. He is presented with a faceted browsing view containing all publication metadata from the feeds. A tag cloud aggregated from the keywords is additionally shown to Kurt. He then restricts the data to certain years to see the changes in the tag cloud. This allows him to reflect on the trending topics.
Next, Kurt restricts the publication type to conference proceedings. Now, all proceedings titles are presented to him, alongside the corresponding articles. From the keyword tag cloud, he chooses a topic that he finds interesting. This supplies Kurt with a list of conferences that are important for that specific topic. 3
In this section, we present the three initial pillars of the publication feed ecosystem: the adapted BuRST format, a suite of web services for feed producers, and several widgets for feed consumers. 3.1
Publication feeds are RSS 1.0 feeds, enhanced with elements from the SWRC2 and
DC3 ontologies. These feeds are an adaption of the BuRST4 format, proposed by Peter
Mika [
See below for an exemplified item representation. The item is divided into two parts:
2. A RDF extension part (highlighted in grey)
Both parts are linked through the burst:publication property. Information given in the RSS part of the item is mainly intended for display purposes (e.g. in RSS feed readers or widgets), and for processing in other tools which can deal with RSS (e.g. Yahoo! Pipes). The RDF extension part describes the publication in a semantically much more sophisticated way. This part is intended for tools and services that are able to process and display BuRST feeds (see sections 3.2 and 3.3), as well as semantic web applications that understand RDF.
Example of a publication represented in a BuRST feed.
<item rdf:about="http://know-center.tugraz.at/papers/16" xml:lang="en"> <title>A Storyboard of the APOSDLE Vision</title> <link>http://www.aposdle.tugraz.at/content/download/288/1411/file/l indstaedt_mayer_APOSDLE_poster_p.pdf</link> <description>Lindstaedt, S. N., Mayer, H. (2006): A Storyboard of the APOSDLE Vision.</description> <dc:date>2009-10-27T14:40:18+01:00</dc:date> <burst:publication> <swrc:InProceedings> <swrc:title>A Storyboard of the APOSDLE Vision</swrc:title> <swrc:author> <swrc:Person> <swrc:name>Lindstaedt, Stefanie N.</swrc:name> </swrc:Person> </swrc:author> <swrc:author> <swrc:Person> <swrc:name>Mayer, Harald</swrc:name> </swrc:Person> </swrc:author> <swrc:booktitle>Proceedings of the First European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning</swrc:booktitle> <swrc:year>2006</swrc:year> <swrc:month>10</swrc:month> </swrc:InProceedings> </burst:publication> </item>
The publication feed format serves two purposes: firstly, it can be understood by existing Web 2.0 infrastructure, which is capable of processing and visualizing RSS feeds. Secondly, it has the expressive power of RDF to describe publication metadata and to link entities through URIs. The example given contains a minimum set of attributes, especially addressing the "what?", "who?", "where?", and "when?". The available vocabulary is much larger, because the whole SWRC ontology can be used to markup publication metadata. 3.2
The Publication Feed Publisher Services are a suite of helper services aiding
individuals as well as institutions in producing, aggregating, and refining publication
feeds. Services are one of the cornerstones of Web 2.0, allowing for loosely coupled
systems and simple syndication [
All publisher services were written in PHP. They are free for everyone to use, and
there is no registration or API key required. To help with the orchestration of these
services, a DERI Pipes [
The Publication Feed Subscriber Widgets are a suite of widgets for the
visualization of and the interaction with publication feeds. They were designed
according to the needs of researchers described in scenario 2. Specifically there are
two widgets already implemented:
1. The Publication Feed Integration Widget was designed as a plugin to the social
networking platform system Elgg [
The publication feed ecosystem is being integrated with the STELLAR Network of Excellence. See Figure 2 for an overview of the proposed concept.
As a first step, all partners within STELLAR are asked to produce a publication
feed. In the process, they are able to use the publisher services described in section
3.2 to generate their feeds. The published feeds are in turn being used to update the
STELLAR Open Archive (SOA) [
At the same time, the subscriber widgets described in section 3.3 are being
deployed to TEL Europe. TEL Europe [
In this paper, we presented an ecosystem for the lightweight exchange of publication metadata contributing to the prerequisites for a modern Science 2.0. In two scenarios, we showed how publication feeds can benefit researchers, institutions, and the TEL community. We described the main building blocks of the ecosystem, being (1) the feed format, (2) publisher services, and (3) subscriber widgets. Lastly, we outlined the adoption of the ecosystem by the STELLAR Network of Excellence.
The adoption process has not been finished yet, but the first results are promising. Four partners in STELLAR are actively developing BuRST feeds. Some of them have already been submitted to the STELLAR Open Archive which recently experienced a boost in the number of publications to 10386. The two subscriber widgets have been deployed to TEL Europe and the first special interest groups are starting to use them.
There are certain challenges regarding the publication feed format, which have not been explicitly addressed in the first version. First, the vocabulary of SWRC could be enhanced to include more metadata, e.g. the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of a publication. Secondly, URIs for authors and institutions would help to manage the entities in the network, and to detect duplicates. URI assignment can either be carried out by the individual institutions or a central repository. With a central repository there is no need to match corresponding entities from various sources, but it also imposes the burden of creating and maintaining said repository.
There are some possible enhancements concerning the existing services and widgets as well. For the Publication Feed Merger, it would make sense to implement a more sophisticated conflict management. This could be done by taking into account the richness of the metadata, as well as the source of information. In the Publication Feed Visualization Widget, additional fields will be added to the existing facets. Furthermore, there is no possibility for end users to correct errors in feed entries. This functionality, however, would rather have to be implemented with a large aggregator of feeds, such as the SOA.
Generally, harvesting and processing of RSS is an open issue. RSS feeds need to
be fully retrieved under most circumstances; one is not able to restrict the data to just
the new/updated items like in dedicated harvesting protocols, such as OAI-PMH7. To
overcome this deficiency, we are investigating the integration of the PubSubHubbub
protocol [
Due to its decentralized architecture, the publication feed ecosystem can be extended by anyone. In the future, we expect to see other interested parties contributing their own components. This openness helps making the ecosystem adaptable by other research communities and is a precondition for its sustainable future. 6 On 24/06/2010 7 Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
This work was carried out as part of the STELLAR Network of Excellence, which is funded by the European Commission (grant agreement no. 231913). This contribution is partly funded by the Know-Center, which is funded within the Austrian COMET program – Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies – under the auspices of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth, and the State of Styria. COMET is managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG. 7