Scholary Publication Models
at The University of Tromsø

Poster presentation by Lars Noodén at The European Conference for Digital Libraries 2003 in Trondheim, Norway on Monday, August 18, 2003.

The University Library at The University of Tromsø (UBiTø) is looking at refining models for publishing written scholarly communication with the goal of implementing initial trials within the year, in conjunction with active researchers and institutes. The current activity has three areas of focus. First recognize the commonalities in the publication of theses, dissertations, articles, journals, and conference proceedings. Second, clarify workflow and identify necessary stages in the development of content, metadata, and review feedback. Last, delineate roles and responsibilities.

Stein Høysdalvik (project leader), Sissel Helen Hansen, Magnhild Svenheim, Leif Longva, Judy Au Opdal, Obiajulu Obi Odu, Lars Noodén

General Goals

The pilot phase is a one-year project for the calendar year 2003 with the following goals:

Publications at the University of Tromsø

Collections at the University Library for The University of Tromsø focus on material about and produced in the boreal region with emphasis is on the North Calotte.

Pilot Collections

Three collections are part of a pilot project.

Nordlyd (ISSN 0332-7531) - "Working Papers on Language & Linguistics" - is a journal published by the School of Languages and Literature and presents articles and working papers by language researchers at the University of Tromsø and with ties to the University. Contribution to discussion and debate on earlier articles is also published. Articles are primarily in English, but also contains articles in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish and German.

Doctoral Dissertations produced by the School of Medicine (Det medisinske fakultet). These are published as a journal, each issue contains one dissertation and several articles by the same author.

Masters and Undergraduate Theses from the Archeology, English and Nordic institutes.

Examples of Other Publications

The next logical step would be to expand the scope of the theses and dissertations to include all institutes and departments.

Masters and Undergraduate Theses

Tromsøflaket is internal, biweekly newspaper for The University of Tromsø.

Ravnetrykk is a publication to inform about new and interesting items in the University Library's collections. It also covers current trends and research results both in northern Norway as well as internationally, and contributes useful information about the Library and books.

Hamsun Bibliography is a collection of articles, letters, books and other writings about Knut Hamsun (1859 - 1952) or his writing.

The Qvigstad Collection is Just Knud Qvigstad's (1853-1957) book collection of about 2500 books covers many disciplines, but largely concentrates on Saami and Finns. A number of the books are bound by Qvigstad himself in Wolffish skin.

Nordlit (ISSN 1503-2086) is a series of working papers in literature published by the Humanities Faculty, University of Tromsø. Nordlit publishes articles on literature by Faculty scholars and their guests. The journal appears twice a year - spring and autumn. Contributors are at liberty to publish their articles elsewhere. The editorial committee is appointed by the Faculty council for a period of 3 years.

Roles and Workflow

The two key parts of the project thus far have been the delineation of roles and responsibilities and the mapping of work flow.

Roles and Responsibilities

The process of creating and publishing documents involves the following roles:

Author (e.g. student)
Submit manus with citations, propose metadata (title, author, abstract, and keywords)
 
Editor (e.g. institute)
Solicit manus, suppliment metadata, citations, and, if necessary, assign reviewers.
 
Reviewer (e.g. advisor or dissertation committee)
Provide feedback as requested by editors
 
Librarian (e.g. cataloger)
Normalize metadata, add controlled vocabulary, add URN and BIBSYS object ID, technical quality control (format, characterset, typesetting)
 
Organizer
Manage user accounts, database and access control lists.
 
[Proof Reader]
[Future changes may include proof reading as an explicit role. Currently it is implicit in the above roles.]
 

Readers are the main reason for providing a publication service.

General User
Fast, anonymous access.
 
Registered User
Allows customizations, predefined searches, able to submit work and and take the role of author above.
 

Workflow

The library becomes involved in the publication process primarily through contact with the editorial teams. However, additional activities include some support for authors as well as collaboration with similar services at other University libraries.

Workflow: Author-Editor/Reviewer-Librarian-Public

Here are some more detailed guesses (in PDF) at possible work flow for each role:

Technical Activities

Technical work has involved evaluating existing publishing kits and examining how available standards and best-of-breed technologies can be best combined to meet our needs. UBiTø is carrying out the development work itself and will have responsibility for maintenance, including technical maintenance.

Standards

One area where UBiTø is collaborating with the University Library in Oslo (UBiO) is the use of standards and schema.

Open Archive Initiative (OAI)
A protocol to allow searches via HTTP using XML and unqualified Dublin Core. By agreeing on common schema (e.g. ISO-639-3 for language, ISO-8601 for dates, URN for document ids, etc.) the precision of cross-searching is increased.
 
Z39.50
An international search and retrieval protocol. We use Z39.50 to import metadata from BIBSYS.
 
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
A simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML, but more easily processed. We use it largely for the exchange of data on the Web:
OAI, above - to increase the availability of the collections.
XHTML - for display in web browsers.
RSS (RDF / Rich Site Summary) - for display in tickers and news agregators
 
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A simple mechanism for adding advanced format and layout to Web documents.
 
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
A standard set of fields (e.g. author, title, subject) and their content for use in cross-domain information resource description. We use Dublin Core for storing bibliographic data and with protocols such as OAI, above.
 
Structured Query Language (SQL)
A programming language for use in relation databases.
 

Tools

The following are best-of-breed technologies in relation to the scale and scope of the project. Development has taken place on several platforms: Debian on PPC and i386, RedHat on i386, OS X on G4, and Solaris on SPARC. Debian seems to be the easiest to maintain and configure, so the pilot will move to Debian on i386.

MySQL
A fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust relational database management system that uses SQL. The next step up would be Oracle.
 
Perl
A stable, cross platform scripting language with good text manipulation capabilities and rapid development. It is the most popular web programming language in part due to over 5000 freely available modules at CPAN.
 
PHP
A recent, but widely used general purpose scripting language.
 
YAZ
An excellent toolkit to provide other programs with Z39.50 capabilities.
 
Apache
A secure, stable, efficient and extensible Web server. It complies with current HTTP standards and has been the most common web server on the Internet since 1996. The next step up would be Zeus.
 

Database structure

The heart of the publication database is a table representing the Dublin Core Element Set in the following manner:


CREATE TABLE elements_dublin_core (
  docid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  identifier enum('Title', 'Creator', 'Subject',
                  'Description', 'Publisher', 'Contributor',
                  'Date', 'Type', 'Format',
                  'Identifier', 'Source', 'Language',
                  'Relation','Coverage',
                  'Rights') NOT NULL default 'Title',
  refinement varchar(32) default NULL,
  scheme varchar(12) NOT NULL default '',
  lang char(3) NOT NULL default '',
  content varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
  UNIQUE KEY data (docid,identifier,qualifier,scheme,lang,content),
  KEY content (content),
  KEY identifier (identifier),
  FULLTEXT KEY elements (content)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

This allows elements to be added in arbitrary numbers, with or without qualifiers. Searches using left, middle, or right trunctation are possible as well. Search facets and results consist of a series of SQL joins.

Fri Aug 15 13:58:46 MEST 2003