[EP-tech] Associating eprints with other entities

[Jan Ploski]

Hi,

I'd like our eprints to be searchable using attributes of other, 
associated entities. Specifically, we want to be able to search for 
eprints that were published in journals that match certain criteria 
(e.g. show all eprints published in OpenAccess journals). The attribute 
values of journals may of course change in time and such changes should 
be reflected immediately for all associated eprints.

The quickest and most primitive approach would be to reproduce the 
desired journal attributes as metadata fields on eprints themselves and 
set the values whenever an eprint is saved. But that would call for some 
mechanism to ensure consistency when the journals themselves change 
(e.g. if a journal becomes OpenAccess, update all eprints that were 
published in it accordingly, to support search; perhaps through a db 
trigger).

Furthermore, the direct approach of just storing the journal title in a 
text field (rather than some stable foreign key) seems bad for ensuring 
referential integrity (journal titles might change, too).

So I was wondering whether it would be proper to model the journals as a 
new dataset and use itemref type fields to refer to them, or whether 
there are other recommended approaches. Do you know of any examples that 
might point me into the right direction?

Regards,
Jan Ploski