PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Within the last decade, the concept of enhanced publications has become more and more prominent. It promises the prospect of more comprehensive communication among scientists. By using electronic publication infrastructures, scientists can provide their colleagues with online access to their published manuscripts - along with various kinds of associated materials. Among the latter we find research data, visualizations or instructive materials. Ideally, those enhanced publications provide more complete research results, thoroughly improve accessibility and facilitate the verification and re-use of scientific information. A website presenting the publication and all its associated materials as hyperlinks seems to be appropriate and adequate from a human's point of view. Mere technology and machines cannot interpret information given in a web page the same way human scientists do. For example, search engines cannot distinguish between raw data and an instructive video that is to be found at the end of a conventional hyperlink without additional semantic information. Hence, in order to give scientists the most sufficient and easy access to the information provided by these new forms of publications, the automated processing of enhanced publications becomes an essential desideratum. New mechanisms are required allowing software systems to interpret inherent relations. Expressing the relations within all parts of an enhanced publication is a strong requirement. Descriptive and technical metadata are common tools that provide this data to information systems. The OAI-ORE standard provides a useful framework to describe relations and manage the content of enhanced publications. However, practical implementations within existing infrastructures are not well established yet. This is why practical approaches are addressed by the eco4r project.