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Review
of the Scholarly Works Application Profile
Part
1: Objectives and Scope, Functional Requirements, Domain
Model.
Objectives and Scope
The Scholarly Works Application
Profile (SWAP) [1] was developed in order to provide a method for describing
eprints, alternatively referred to as scholarly works, research papers or
scholarly research texts. A ‘Scholarly Work’ is a distinct intellectual or
artistic scholarly creation. SWAP defines an
eprint to be a scientific or scholarly research text , for example a
peer-reviewed journal article, a preprint, a working paper, a thesis, a book
chapter, a report, etc.
The purpose of the SWAP was
to
offer a solution to metadata issues identified in Eprints
The audience for the
profile is described in the background statement [9] as the
JISC repositories search service and other parts of the JISC repositories
programme; and the eprints repositories community in the
Use
cases for the SWAP are set out in the description of each of the functional
requirements for the profile – they are too long to list here individually.
[5]
Functional
Requirements
The descriptions provided for in
SWAP allow the description of the range of eprints/scholarly works typically
produced by academics and researchers. While, the SWAP describes a large number
of functional requirements, descriptions made using the profile are principally
designed to [9]:
·
Provide
richer, more consistent metadata descriptions of eprints;
·
Facilitate
search, browse or filter by a range of elements, including journal, conference
or publication title, peer-review status and resource
type;
·
Enable
identification of the latest, or most appropriate, version and facilitate
navigation between different versions of eprints;
·
Support
added-value services, particularly those based on the use of OpenURL
ContextObjects;
·
Implement
an unambiguous method of identifying the full text(s) of
eprints;
·
Enable
identification of the research funder and project code;
·
Facilitate
identification of open access materials.
Domain
Model
The domain model used by SWAP is
based on the Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) model, issued by the International
Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) in 1998 [6]. FRBR models the
bibliographic world using 4 key entities - 'Work', 'Expression', 'Manifestation'
and 'Item' – which are the subject of bibliographic descriptions. The SWAP model
includes a fifth entity, ‘agent’, which embodies the FRBR supporting entities of
‘person’ and ‘corporate body’.
The SWAP documentation includes
both a diagrammatic description of the domain model and a natural language
expression of the diagram [7]:
“A
ScholarlyWork may be expressed as one or more Expressions. Each Expression may
be manifested as one or more Manifestations. Each Manifestation may be made
available as one or more Copies. Each ScholarlyWork may have one or more
creators, funders and supervisors. Each Expression may be have one or more
editors. Each Manifestation may have one or more publishers.”
Andrew &
Akira
20 August
2008
[1]
http://knowware.nada.kth.se/DCWiki/EprintsApplicationProfile
[2]
http://www.intute.ac.uk/
[3] None of the SWAP documentation
describes the objectives of SWAP itself, although the statement about the
background to the development of the profile provided on the SWAP wiki [8] gives
what are essentially the objectives of the profile [9]. The description above
also uses information from an article in Ariadne [10], and a 2006 presentation by
J. Allinson and A. Powell [11].
[4]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Functional_Requirements#Stakeholders_and_designated_community
[5]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Functional_Requirements#Functional_Requirements_Specification
[6]
http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.htm
[7]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Model
[8]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWAP
[9]
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWAP#Background
[10]
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue50/allinson-et-al/
[11] http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/j.allinson/eprints-ap-openscholarship.pdf
Questions asked of the SWAP for
this part of the review.
1.
Is there a description of the context in which the application profile is
used (or can be used)?
Yes.
2.
Is the target user group for the application profile identified and
described?
Yes.
3.
Are the organizations and individuals who participated in the development
of a profile identified and described?
Yes.
4.
Are any arrangements, guidelines, or intentions regarding the future
development and maintenance of the profile described?
Yes.
5.
Are the functional requirements defined?
Yes.
6.
Does the model depict the set of entities to be described and the
relationships among those entities?
Yes
7.
If an application profile uses an externally defined data
model:
FRBR is used as the basis
8.
Is the externally data model identified?
Yes.
9.
Are deviations from the externally defined data model
documented?
Yes.