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FAIRiCat

Signposting the Scholarly Web
United States of America
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About

Launched: 2024
Record Updated: Nov 07, 2024
Standard, specification or protocol
The FAIR Interoperability Catalogue - FAIRiCat - cen be used by repositories to uniformly advertise the interoperability affordances they provide. Interoperability affordances can encompass the entire collection of objects managed by a repository (e.g. OAI-PMH, APIs) or only manifest when interacting with an object managed by the repository (e.g. FAIR Signposting, Dublin Core). FAIRiCats can be used in automatic processes by clients that are looking for specific approaches to interoperate with a repository, e.g. via OAI-PMH, SPARQL, Sitemaps, Linked Data Notifications. FAIRiCats can also be used manually as a way to obtain a quick overview of the interoperability characteristics of a repository.

Mission

There is little interoperability among scholarly repositories on the web. Most focus on access via the user interface. Some provide APIs for machine access, in which case each repository platform has its own. But how about some uniform approaches to allow machines to interact with repositories? Wouldn't that make it a lot easier/cheaper to implement cross-repository services? Understanding that resources are scarce, the "Signposting the Scholarly Web" effort provides really simple approaches that repositories can implement to improve machine accessibility of their content. It is not a formal standardization effort. It's an accumulation of ideas from people that have spent a lot of time thinking about the web and scholarly communication on the web, working on specifications to improve on the interoperability status quo. The specifications provided under the Signposting umbrella are fully aligned with hypermedia (REST, HATEOAS) lines of thinking regarding web interoperability.

Key Achievements

The "Signposting the Scholarly Web" effort started in 2016 by recommending patterns, based on typed links, that repositories can implement to make it easier for machines to navigate the scholarly objects they host. By 2024, the effort provides several specifications that repositories can implement to make their objects more accessible to machines. FAIR Signposting Profile provides a guideline with concrete recipes for the implementation of the Signposting patterns. FAIRiCat specifies the content, syntax, and discoverability of the FAIR Interoperability Catalogue, a static file that repositories can publish to advertise the interoperability affordances they provide, including repository-level and object-level affordances. Signmap shows how Sitemaps, that have been the dominant approach to help web crawlers find a server's resources since 2009, can be augmented to include Signposting links as a means to create a self-contained inventory of scholarly objects managed by a repository.

Technical Attributes

Maintenance Status

Actively Maintained

Open Code Repository

Implemented
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Technical Documentation

Implemented
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Technical Attribute Statements

Technology Readiness Level

  • Technology validated in relevant environment

Content Licensing

  • Creative commons licenses

Standards

Persistent Identifier

Any persistent identifiers chosen by the repository as long as they are expressed as HTTP(S) URIs.

Community Engagement

Community Statements

Engagement with Values Frameworks

  • COAR Next Generation Repositories Principles

Policies & Governance

Policies

Policy Statements

Board Structure

  • None

Board Level

There is no board.

Community Governance

  • Ad hoc

Additional Information

Organizational History

"Signposting the Scholarly Web" is not a formal standardization effort. It's an accumulation of ideas from people that have spent a lot of time thinking about the web and scholarly communication on the web, working on specifications to improve on the interoperability status quo, and witnessing some specifications being adopted and others not. From its outset in 2016, core contributors have been Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael L. Nelson, Shawn Jones, and Martin Klein. But input from others is actively solicited as exemplified by extensive authorship statements of the various specifications.https://github.com/hvdsomp/signposting

Organizational Structure

Business or Ownership Model

Volunteer community

Full-time Staff

0

Volunteers

1-5

Current Affiliations

Data Archiving Networked Services (DANS), Old Dominion University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Funding

Primary Funding Source

Volunteering

Funding Needs

Funding for outreach, advocacy of "Signposting the Scholarly Web" specifications would be helpful.
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