What Types of Data Formats are Currently Supported on the Hub?
The import of available metadata records is easy! In just a few steps you will be able to import and find all requested records to your workspace and ready for enhancement or download.
Open the dropdown menu of your →My BookMetaHub and go to your →Dashboard.
On the →Dashboard are currently two import formats supported which you can choose:
You can easily add basic metadata for your books and chapters by submitting a list of DOIs (Crossref and Datacite accepted). Simply paste a list of DOIs into the request box or upload an excel sheet to query all metadata for your DOIs.
After your request is processed, we will send you a notification by e-mail.
Alternatively, you can upload ONIX XMLs via the Dashboard. Currently, supported ONIX formats are 3.0 and 2.1. Please note that the readout for ONIX 3.0 might lead to better results for your metadata. This is due to the fact that the latter format is more standardized, which in return leads to a higher chance for a richer set of imported data.
After your request is processed, we will send you a notification by e-mail.
As the last step for both please select your →Publisher Workspace for all requested records to be imported to.
Stay tuned for more import formats to become available later this year!
How-To Upload, Enhance, and Export your Book Metadata:
BookMetaHub’s new interface allows publishers to enhance their metadata to make it compliant to digital environment requirements and to enrich and standardize it, to increase interoperability for easy sharing and re-use for other platforms.
Step-by-step guide
The new BookMetaHub is able to ingest a variety of formats, which you can upload via the →My BookMetaHub →Dashboard.
Publishers can then enhance and enrich the metadata via a →User Interface to make the records fit for indexing in a digital research environment. The publishers who have no metadata ready can input information directly via the User Interface.
Designated output is primarily PubMed compatible BITS XMLs and Crossref XMLs, and, coming soon, ONIX 3.0 as the current ONIX standard. We will also add a MARC XML implementation later this year to be able to still service the librarians and libraries, as MARC records sometimes are rather slim and could benefit from additional or translated abstracts, keywords, and the like to provide more context information to the publication.
The overall objective is to make use of a variety of formats and enhance them so that they can be reused for digital indexing, to help solidify and standardize relevant metadata elements–in short, to upgrade records for usage in an e-environment.
Export Content via XML Files
After successful import, creation, or enhancement of your book and chapter metadata, you can freely download all content to share with other third-party content aggregators.
HowTo export content via BITS or Crossref-compatible XML:
On all record pages on the BookMetaHub you will find a →Download button. Just click the button, and select your preferred →export format. Supported currently in the system are BITS XMLs and Crossref XML
Stay tuned for BITS import formats to become available later this year!
Easily Create, Enhance, or Update your metadata via the BookMetaHub
The new BookMetaHub offers an intuitive User Interface for publishers to either create metadata from scratch or enhance and update available content whenever there are changes required!
HowTo work on your metadata via the User Interface:
Once publishers successfully register on the BookMetaHub and create their own workspace, all available metadata can be easily imported via the current import features. All records will be added to the publisher workspace. If there are no data files or records available, publishers can use the interface to create book and chapter records from scratch.
HowTo create metadata for your books and chapter:
- On all publisher workspaces there is a →Add new book button availble on the workspace banner. Just click the button and the User Interface will open for manual input of available metadata. Just follow the descriptions on the page.
- Once a book record is finished, it will show up in the publisher workspace page listing all new records.
- To add additional chapters, open the respective book record and click on the →Create chapter button. Again the User Interface will open for manually inserting respective chapter details.
- Book-level metadata will be inherited from the book, so only specific chapter details need to be added.
- Once all required details are added, click the →Save button. That’s it!
HowTo update or enhance your metadata for your books and chapter:
- After succesful import of content to your publisher workspace via the supported import features, publishers can access any record pages via the their workspace.
- You can easily access any record pages of your imported books and chapters via the workspace.
- On all book and chapter record pages, publishers will find an →Enhance metadata button. Just click the button and the User Interface will open showing all imported details.
- Simply scan through the data to quickly find missing elements or change incorrect details.
- Once respective changes are done via the Interface, click the →Save button. That’s it!
After a few minutes, your newly created or updated records will be ready for download on all record pages!
BookMetaHub
We have built a new environment with a free interface to create, maintain and enrich, or export available open book metadata.
Open metadata for books is essential for the transformation of the whole scholarly landscape, and one of its greatest advantages is full immediate accessibility.
The new BookMetaHub was created to enable institutional and academic publishers, libraries, or university presses to easily maintain and enrich their metadata. These stakeholders can have free access to a state-of-the-art system to create from scratch or enrich available input via an easy-to-use user interface storing data in versatile BITS XML format. Vice versa, an open API allows for data export to facilitate distribution across various databases and repositories and will guarantee compliance with common standards and best practices.
Background
Back in 2019 we started working with books content and have now over 6 million book and chapter records. However, coming initially from journal indexing, we rather quickly had to learn that data and corresponding data formats in use for sharing book content that is out there in the book publishing industry have a qualitative and quantitative downside in comparison to available article content—which is that they were not primarily created for the usage of indexing in a digital research environment and speaking of ONIX, not created only for books but covering a great variety of other media formats as well.
So arguably, even though MARC and ONIX records are still the most common data resource for book indexing, they are not necessarily or inherently well-suited for this purpose. Originally intended for library catalogs or distribution channels, the main objective is to have all available formats listed with respect to the individual physical manifestation in actual print. Of course, also these formats are being updated constantly to adjust to recent developments and to be able to answer to shifting needs in indexing. However records oftentimes do not even reference themselves. This can lead to a number of problematic consequences, such as missing digitalized and persistent bibliographic data and/or fragmentary portability or interoperability.
So, book publications overall not only still lack visibility within an electronic environment but the whole publishing landscape around books seems to suffer more from a tendency towards a non-standardized, and as such potentially more error-prone, communication between various indexing systems and respective data formats. As an indexer and research database our aim is always to consolidate datasets—that is bringing together formats under one header—and most importantly, we want to emphasize the version of record side-by-side with further, and potentially freely accessible, versions.
Therefore, our focus is greatly different: Instead of accentuating the variety we aim to unify the records. As a fundamental prerequisite we require persistent identifiers for creating constant linkages in a digital world. Most importantly, we need stable link-outs to the actual content pages (this is a huge qualitative difference!), ideally DOIs; and obviously we need license information to show open access content as freely accessible. Many times, licenses are not provided, or if they are, they are not clearly tagged in a machine-readable format—which makes it basically lost OA content. Persistent IDs are not necessarily inputted in MARC or ONIX (even if the data structure is there); however, and this is important to stress, those perceived gaps in data are oftentimes due to a different intended purpose for creating the content or simply due to an unawareness regarding the importance of adding those essential elements.
Our idea was to change the status quo and help publishers upgrade their (“analog”) metadata coming from print to e-metadata 2.0 for the digital world.
How does BookMetaHub work?
Put plainly, we have created a free interface for publishers to enhance their metadata to make it compliant to digital environment requirements, and to enrich and standardize it to increase interoperability for easy sharing and re-use for other platforms.
The new BookMetaHub is able to ingest a variety of formats, esp. here of course ONIX 2.1 and 3.0, Crossref metadata, or BITS XMLs. Publishers can then enhance and enrich the metadata according to a selected output and its format-specific requirements. For those who have neither at hand, they can input information directly via the User Interface.
Designated output is primarily PubMed compatible BITS XMLs, and Crossref-compatible XMLs for easy content destribution and DOI + metadata registration. For further output formats such as ONIX, MARC, KBART, or JSON, we are currenty setting up an easy data transfer between the BookMetaHub and the Thoth system.
The overall objective is to make use of the variety of formats and enhance them so that they can be reused for digital indexing, to help solidify and standardize relevant metadata elements, to upgrade records for usage in an e-environment.
Our approach to bridge those data gaps is therefore threefold:
- First, data is uploaded via Crossref or DataCite DOI or ONIX and relevant elements for the purpose of indexing are stored in the database. For best results and a richer start set of metadata, Crossref queried records can be updated with ONIX (e.g. for cover images). Alternatively, records can be created by direct/manual input via the interface.
- The next step is format-specific enhancement to make the records a suitable data source for indexing in digital environments. Via the interface book and chapter metadata can also be created from scratch for those who have no book records at hand.
- For example, a source ONIX record could be uploaded, enriched with detailed affiliation data, incl. also ORCID IDs, FundRef IDs, DOIs, translated titles or abstract information, keywords, etc.
- Lastly, enhanced records can be outputted as BITS XML to be sent to other databases or to Crossref to make the freely available metadata set richer.
An Overview of Essential Elements as Part of the Metadata to Boost Book and Chapter Discoverability:
- DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
- Track publications throughout their lifecycle of various formats, editions, platforms, or versions
- Chapter-DOIs – connected to a book title
- Browse chapter pages with rich metadata connected via a TOC menu
- Chapter-DOIs as additional links back to your content
- OA licenses
- Machine-readability to guarantee OA publications will be detected across the landscape
- Copyright details
- Book-level abstracts (in English and original language of publication)
- Help to reach wider audiences and researchers to evaluate best fits
- Abstracts as essential data for many machine-learning and AI systems
- Chapter-level abstracts (in English and original language of publication)
- Easy enrichment on all book-levels
- Funding details (Funder, Funder-IDs, Grant no.)
- Institution/Affiliation
- Add more insight to the context around a publication
- ORCID ID (authors/editors)
- Open references
- Why keep them under wraps—increase your citation metrics instead
- Open Reviews
- Add transparency to the workflow
- Credit the review community
- Open Data Linking
- Better reproducibility
- Better transparency
- Less redundancy
Peer review is an essential function for academic publishers. From post-publication and open peer review intrastructure to more traditional forms of blinded peer review, ScienceOpen provides manuscript submission and peer review management tools embedded in a discovery platform to support your editors’ search for expert reviewers.
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Metadata Services at ScienceOpen
As a publisher you may want to host the version of record of your articles and books on your own website or repository, but take advantage of the rich metadata creation and distribution capacities of a professional hosting platform. With ScienceOpen we can make that happen! Our Metadata Technical Hub will help you create and maintain high quality XML metadata, deposit rich data to Crossref, DOAJ and other services. Metadata services are are available for book, journal and conference content.
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Looking for professional hosting of your scholarly content that maximizes the digital presence of your journals and books in the internet and reduces the time you spend on distribution? ScienceOpen can host your open access journal, conference or books in an interactive environment with state-of-the-art SEO, long-term archiving with CLOCKSS and integration with ORCID, Crossref and more.
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Flyers
ScienceOpen offers a multitude of services including publishing, hosting, media promotion, and technical consultation that are all customizable depending on the specific needs of our partners. Below, you will find routinely updated flyers that give detailed information regarding the services we currently provide:
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Launching a new open access journal or an open access press? ScienceOpen now provides full end-to-end open access publishing solutions – embedded within our smart interactive discovery environment. A modular approach allows open access publishers to pick and choose among a range of services and design the platform that fits their goals and budget. Continue reading “Publishing services”
