[BOAI] Use of Web of Science Web Services?

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Gerald Lawson, via the JISC-Repositories list.  --Peter
Suber.]


Colleagues,

1. I presume that all repositories on this list have a library subscription
to Web of Science (?), and hence have access to (some) real-time metadata
from WoS webservices (
http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/products/related/webservices/)?  Are many
Institutional Repositories using this to pre-populate their repositories?
How successful has this been? Are there EPrints or DSpace plugins to
facilitate this?

2. Research Councils mandate that metadata on papers arising from our
funding should be deposited in appropriate repositories.  This includes
funder and grantnumber information.  Councils have not monitored compliance
however - and many repositories do not have these fields - let alone have
them fully populated. Since 2008 WoS has been 'mining' funder and
grantnumber information from the acknowledgement sections of papers - but
less than 30% of those providing a funder name also provide grantnumber -
and without this is it difficult to match a multi-authored paper to a
particular grantholder.  Much editing/checking of this data is therefore
needed.  Would the following be workable - say from 1 Jan 2012 onwards?

a) Thompson Reuters are approached to include Funder and GrantNumber in
their Web Services Lite package (they are currently only available in the
premium version).
b) IR packages provide plugins to facilitate access to the WoS/Scopus Web
Services (Scopus will provide funder information 'from early 2012').
c) Institutional Repositories are encouraged to use WoS/Scopus Web Services
to complete any missing records  AND to add Funder and GrantNumber fields.
d) Research Councils ask grantholders to ensure that data in these two
fields in their Institutional Repositories (or Thematic Repositories) are
CORRECT.
e) An appropriate repository aggregation services provides a faceted search
of all [UK-based?] repositories and allows searches by both Funder
(dc.contributor.sponsor) and GrantNumber (dc.identifier.grantnumber).  The
DC fields are the current EThOS standard (
http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk/tiki-index.php?page_ref_id=47), but
there is clearly a need to agree this with other standards agencies - e.g.
Driver & Open-Aire. in the EU (what about the US?).

This is tentative proposal focused on the UK - but comments from anywhere on
the feasibility/timescale would be welcome.  For example the NSF/NIH Funding
Dashboard (http://rd-dashboard.nitrd.gov/) makes heavy use of funder
information from WoS - it would be interesting to know how mistakes/gaps in
this can be corrected in the US?

Gerry Lawson, NERC Research Information Systems, 01793-444417 (o)
07740-068060 (m) gela at nerc.ac.uk
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