The ServiceCORE project is addressing a wide range of problems caused by the rapid increase of Open Access scientific papers stored across UK institutional repositories. These problems include:- The difficulty of accessing real, full-text data from these distributed sources efficiently.
- The difficulty of generating data statistics (size, growth, subjects).
- The difficulty of searching, organising and navigating this distributed information.
- The difficulty of analysing the data.
- The difficulty of repurposing and reusing the data in other applications.
- The difficulty of building services on top of the UK Repository Infrastructure
The ServiceCORE project is responding to these challenges by developing a nation-wide aggregation service for content stored across UK Open Access Repositories. The CORE system is not only harmonising the access to the UK repository content, but it is also processing the full-text-content using text-mining methods to enrich the existing metadata. This includes extraction of citation information, recommendation of similar content etc.
In terms of the added value to the UK repository landscape, the CORE service contribution can be summarised in the following way:
- CORE is providing a platform that can be freely used to develop other services or experimental applications that need to manipulate the UK repository content.
- CORE can provide various types of content statistics including content growth statics across the UK repositories.
- CORE can improve the usability of institutional repositories by providing them Plugins that can carry out specific tasks, such as discover related content in other repositories or to locate an Open Access repository for a specific publication.
- CORE can enable the content stored in any OAR in the UK to be accessible and downloadable from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.
As part of the ServiceCORE project we will be improving and extending the CORE system with:
(a) a new Web Service layer working on top of the CORE Linked Data repository, providing programmable access to both content and metadata,
(b) an enhanced related resource discovery system based on text-mining,
(c) a pilot tool for automatic subject-based classification of content using text categorisation techniques.
The Resource Discovery Task Force (RDTF) vision, and the resulting JISC Discovery programme, emphasises the role for aggregations built on top of open data as the way to deliver a comprehensive and sustainable resource discovery environment. CORE serves exactly the role of ‘aggregator’ as described in the RDTF vision, building on the large amount of open data already available in UK HE OARs.
The Discovery guide to Open Bibliographic Data describes 13 possible types of aggregation. While ServiceCORE could meet many of these aggregation use cases, the particular approach and strengths of ServiceCORE mean that it would be particularly effective in delivering AUC-06. Offer a platform for developers & data processing.