FOCUS AREAS

Enhanced publications

The possibilities offered by the Internet have given researchers and teaching staff broad and easy access to scientific/scholarly sources. It is not only publications that have become available but also such elements as the underlying data, models and algorithms. Adding the underlying research data and models to a publication makes it easier to verify, reproduce, and re-use the results of research. What is an Enhanced Publication?
An Enhanced Publication is a new type of publication. It links a publication – usually a text –with additional material, like research data, models, algorithms, illustrative images, metadata sets or post-publication data such as comments or rankings. The option of changing post-publication data allows an Enhanced Publication to develop over the course of time.

Powerful
The power of an Enhanced Publication is that the relations between research outputs are described in a meaningful way. Both in a human readable form as a machine readable form. An Enhanced Publication makes use of Resource Maps, Persistent Identifiers for linking and RDF (Resource Description Framework).

Meaningful relations
In addition, these new linking techniques allow a researcher to link any type of object with another object. It’s easy to link an article with reviews, lectures and interviews which can be found on the internet. But here they are non-related snippets of information in different locations. By describing the relations between the different types of information it can be presented in one overview. This is what we call an ‘Enhanced Publication’.

Download the SURFshare flyer on Enhanced Publications.

Videos
A series of short films on Enhanced Publications describes what such publications are and why this new technique offers researchers added value. The films are based on lessons learned in five different innovation projects carried out within the context of the SURFshare programme in 2009. The overall promotional video has English subtitles.

Projects 2010/2011
In 2011 six projects allowed researchers from a variety of disciplines to experience how to enhance their publication(s).

The six projects took place within five disciplines:
• Economics: Open Data and Publications
• Linguistics: Lenguas de Bolivia and Enhanced NIAS Publications
• Musicology: The Other Josquin
• Communication sciences: Enhancing Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Geosciences: VPcross.

In a short video (7 min.) six researchers talk about their view on Enhanced Publications and their experiences in their project.

Additionally there are some projects that focus on specific aspects of Enhanced Publications.
ESCAPE 2 improved the “proof of concept” ESCAPE tools (the ESCAPE editor and the Resource Map repository).
EJME developed a tool to make an Enhanced Publication within an Open Access journal.
And Enhanced Publications in NARCIS (VPN) has made it possible to present the different kind of Enhanced Publications in NARCIS.

InContext visualiser for enhanced publications
These projects can use the InContext visualiser for enhanced publications, that was developed in the SURFshare programme.

Enhanced Publications in journals
In the project EJME - Enhanced Journals Made Easy the Open Journal System software is adapted to allow storing journal articles together with supplementary materials. Also the process is investigated how best to incorporate the collecting and publishing of the materials in the publishing workflow.

Projects 2008/2009
SURFshare initiated several projects in 2008 and 2009. Universities experimented with Enhanced Publications
• JALC – Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries - Dissertations in Dutch Archaeology
• DatapluS - Repositories for Enhanced Survey Publications
• ESCAPE - Enhanced Scientific Communication by Aggregated Publications Environments
• Proefschriften Plus - Enhanced dissertations in the Utrecht repository
• Veteran Tapes VP - Enhanced publication based on multidisciplinary reuse of qualitative research files
• CORF/OA+ - Collectieve Onderwijs Research Faciliteit
• Samen in Delen - Enhanced Publications Universiteit van Tilburg en Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

Collaboration
SURFshare collaborates with universities, DANS (Data Archiving and Network Services), the National Library of the Netherlands (KB), the 3TU Data Centre, and other relevant organisations and institutions in developing an infrastructure for enhanced publications. There is also a great deal of collaboration with international partners in the context of Knowledge Exchange (JISC in the United Kingdom, DFG in Germany, DEFF in Denmark).

The DRIVER II project, financed in the context of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), resulted in two publications on Enhanced Publications:
• Enhanced Publications: Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories.
• Emerging Standards for Enhanced Publications and Repository Technology

Dutch knowledge for Europe
The Dutch universities, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) have gained a great deal of knowledge, experience, and good practices concerning enhanced publications during the SURFshare programme. All of this will now be utilised in the EU’s OpenAIREplus project (Second Generation of Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe). The European Commission requires that publications and data generated by a research study financed with EU money must be linked together and to the funding programme or project for the study. The OpenAIREplus project involves 41 pan-European partners, including a number of Dutch institutions – in particular Data Archiving and Network Services (DANS), Utrecht University, and the University of Amsterdam – which will contribute their knowledge and experience of Enhanced Publications.

For more information, contact Maurice Vanderfeesten on +31 (0)30 234 6600.