[Esip-preserve] a new relation type for subset citations

[Jeff de La Beaujardiere - NOAA]

I strongly disagree with the RDA recommendation to include subset
specifiers in citations and to require the provider to record them
permanently. Besides the huge burden on the providers, subsetting is only
one part of the workflow. Scientific papers need to describe the work they
did including subsetting, mathematical operations, assumptions, et cetera,
so merely capturing the subset information is nearly worthless. If the
workflow is to be captured in a machine-readable fashion, then a
service-neutral language such as (but not necessarily) the OGC Web Coverage
Processing Service grammar should be referenced in the paper using a URL
maintained by the author or publisher of the paper.

I would like to register this objection with RDA but am not sure where to
do so. I have CCed Mark Parsons as a start.

Regards,
Jeff DLB


Jeff de La Beaujardiere, PhD
NOAA Data Management Architect
1335 East-West Hwy, Silver Spring MD 20910 USA
+1 301 713 7175 (NESDIS/ACIO-S - SSMC1/5236)
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1001-9210

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Greg Janée <esip-preserve at lists.esipfed.org
> wrote:

> The RDA data citation working group has recommended that subsets of
> datasets (more broadly, queries against datasets) be persistently
> identified upon request; cf.
> https://www.rd-alliance.org/group/data-citation-wg/wiki/wgdc-recommendations.html
> .
> `
> For this to work, queries have to be stored *somewhere*.  One approach
> (this appears to be the RDA group's working assumption) is for the provider
> to take on the burden of permanently storing queries, and from there it can
> issue PIDs for those queries by whatever means it has available.  Another
> approach is for the provider to support a query API of some kind, e.g.,
> query URLs (think http://dataset?query=this+that+and+the+other).  This
> may result in lengthy URLs, but an external identifier system can be used
> to assign short, opaque PIDs that redirect to those query URLs.
>
> Regardless of the approach taken, the net result is multiple, related
> PIDs: one PID for the dataset as a whole, and then multiple PIDs, one per
> stored query.  It would be beneficial to record the relationship between
> these identifiers, particularly in the case when an external identifier
> system is being used.  The DataCite metadata schema (
> http://schema.datacite.org) lists a number of possibilities, but none
> quite fit:
>
> - IsPartOf/HasPart: "A IsPartOf B" implies that B can be broken down into
> some disjoint pieces, and A is one of those pieces.  But a cited subset is
> not a disjoint part of a whole.
>
> - IsCitedBy/Cites: "A IsCitedBy B" implies that B mentions A in some way,
> and is possibly intellectually derived from A, but not necessarily.  This
> is intentionally a pretty vague relationship (as vague as publication
> citations, right?), whereas a cited subset has a very specific relationship
> to the whole.
>
> - IsReferencedBy/References: same thing.
>
> - IsMemberOf/HasMember (a newly proposed relation): "A IsMemberOf B"
> implies that B has some rules or standards for inclusion, and A satisfies
> those rules.  Doesn't seem applicable in this case.
>
> So I'm wondering if we need a new relation, which I'll provisionally call
> "IsCitedSubsetOf".  "A IsCitedSubsetOf B" would mean that a reference to A
> is really a reference to B, but only a subset of B was actually used.  Note
> that I didn't call it IsSubsetOf, for that would bring up the same issues
> that IsPartOf has.  It seems important to record that the purpose of these
> query PIDs is for citation and nothing else.
>
> Thoughts?
> -Greg
>
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