Researcher Pod: Scholarly Communication Using the Decentralized Web

Herbert Van de Sompel @hvdsomp
NDE TC Meetings, Amsterdam, 12 Feb 2020
Scholarly Communications Using
The Decentralized Web
Project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Herbert Van de Sompel @hvdsomp (DANS)

Project Overview
• Partners: Ghent University IDLab & DANS
• PIs: Ruben Verborgh & Herbert Van de Sompel
• Duration: 01/01/2020-31/12/2023
• Funding: ± $ 800K (staff & travel)
• Based on ideas presented in my 2017 CNI Paul Evan Peters lecture
“Scholarly Communication: Deconstruct & Decentralize?”, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nUe-6Ln-8

A Combination of Two Themes
1. Decoupled Scholarly Communication System
2. Decentralized Web

Functions of Scholarly Communication
• Registration: Allows claims of precedence for a scholarly finding
• Certification: Establishes validity of the claim
• Awareness: Allows actors in the system to remain aware of new
claims
• Archiving: Preserves the scholarly record over time
Roosendaal and Geurts (1997) Forces and Functions in Scientific Communication.
http://www.physik.uni-oldenburg.de/conferences/crisp97/roosendaal.html

Decoupling Registration from Certification
Paul Ginsparg (2001) Creating a global knowledge network.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/blurb/pg01unesco.html

Van de Sompel, H., et al. (2004) Rethinking scholarly communication: Building the System that
Scholars Deserve. D-Lib Magazine, 10(9). https://doi.org/10.1045/september2004-vandesompel
Pathways for a unit of scholarly
communication

Decoupling All Functions
• In a digital networked scholarly communication system:
• Each function can be fulfilled by a different party
• Each function can be fulfilled in different ways
• Each function can simultaneously be fulfilled by different parties,
potentially in different ways
• In order for this to be realistically feasible/scalable, interoperability
needs to be established between the parties/services that fulfill the
functions

Van de Sompel, H., et al. (2006) An Interoperable Fabric for Scholarly Value Chains. D-Lib
Magazine, 12(10). https://doi.org/10.1045/october2006-vandesompel
NSF Pathways: Early (2006) Attempt at Achieving Interoperability
• Focused very strongly on web-centric representation of compound
digital objects (meanwhile called Research Objects)
• Resulted in OAI-ORE (core ingredient of Research Objects model)
• The technology/standards were just not there yet

Social Network Silos
• Some massive central portals dominate the web
• Service is smooth, free; the user is the product
• No mobility; the user not in control of (moving) her data
• No interoperability; different APIs (if any) for different platforms
• Functionality contained within a portal, can’t be reused on content that
resides in other portal
Tim Berners-Lee (2011) Socially aware cloud storage.
https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/CloudStorage.html
Put the user back in the driver’s seat by means of user owned “pods”
that store the user’s resources. Third parties are granted access.
Introduce cross-pod applications.

MIT Solid Architecture
https://solid.mit.edu

Bringing the Two Themes Together
1. Decoupled Scholarly Communication System
2. Decentralized Web

Alice’s pod
Artifact
URI-A
INBOX
(1) register
URI-A
(0) create
Registration Service Hub
register(R-SH,URI-A)
INBOX
Registration Certification
(3)
request
registration
Certification Service Hub
E2: certify(C-SH,URI-A)
INBOX
Awareness Service Hub
E3: disseminate(W-SH,URI-A)
INBOX
Archiving service hub
E4: archive(A-SH,URI-A)
INBOX
Awareness
(6)
notify
of
certification
Archiving
(4)
notify
of
registration
(5)
request
certification
Orchestrator
(2) trigger
registration
(8)
acknowledge
existence
(10)
notify
of
archiving
(7)
notify
of
existence
Policy rules
E1
E1 E2 E3 E4
E2 E3 E4
(9)
request
archiving
Scholarly
Dashboard

Work Packages
1. Researcher Pod
2. Orchestration of the Scholarly Functions
3. Decentralized Scholarly Record
4. Researcher Interfaces
5. Dissemination and Outreach

Researcher Pod: Planned Outcomes
1. A technology gap analysis regarding the use of Solid as a
researcher pod in a decentralized/decoupled scholarly
communication setting
2. A data model and RDF shapes for artifact metadata, including
affordances to handle temporal, semantic, and maturity versioning
3. A versioned linking mechanism for RDF
4. A temporal version interface for Solid
5. A granular query interface to retrieve related resources

Orchestration of the Scholarly Functions: Planned Outcomes
1. An architectural diagram for decentralized/decoupled scholarly
communication
2. A data model for events that supports expressing artifact lifecycle
and artifact interaction information
3. A process for exchanging event information
4. A representation format for orchestration rules
5. An implementation of a rule-based orchestration agent

Decentralized Scholarly Record: Planned Outcomes
1. A design of a workflow for a decentralized certification process
2. A prototype implementation demonstrating the orchestration of
decentralized peer review
3. A design for a distributed scholarly web archive
4. A prototype implementation demonstrating a distributed scholarly
web archive
5. Survey of possible approaches to validate the integrity of the
events recorded in the logs.
6. A prototype implementation of a promising approach to verify event
logs.

Researcher Interfaces: Planned Outcomes
1. A prototype implementation of the Scholarly Dashboard
2. A prototype implementation of the Scholarly Browser
3. A prototype implementation of the Collector with guided link-
traversal-based querying

Researcher Pod: Scholarly Communication Using the Decentralized Web

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Researcher Pod: Scholarly Communication Using the Decentralized Web