A pragmatic approach to complex citations, closing the provenance gap between IPCC AR6 figures and CMIP6 simulations
Creators: name: Pascoe, Charlotte
name: Parton, Graham
name: Stockhause, Martina
name: Sitz, Lina
name: Fisher, Ellie
name: MacRae, Molly
name: Kreuss, Beate
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024
Subjects: EGU
Complex Citation
Reliquary
PID Graph
Knowledge Graph
CMIP6
IPCC

description: We present a pragmatic solution to the complex citation challenge that uses an existing public infrastructure technology, Zenodo, as a reliquary.  

 

A reliquary is a way to handle citation/knowledge graph depths that are too complex for existing publications, their use is being explored by the Research Data Alliance Complex Citation group and others in the publication and knowledge graphs spheres. A Reliquary is a citable, highly detailed, metadata rich object that provides the degree of traceability and cite-ability necessary for assigning due credit, transparency and reproducibility that underpins the scientific method. 

 

Zenodo is a general-purpose open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN. It allows researchers to deposit research papers, data sets, research software, reports and any other research related digital artefacts. Using the features of a Zenodo item we can form a Reliquary Object with two aspects: a metadata rich ‘casket’ (the record) and the ‘contents’ (the deposited items) which allow us to connect and collate numerous data objects.

 

Credit

Zenodo’s related work feature is used to link to existing data objects through Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) such as DOIs. 

CMIP6 data citation DOIs are assigned at a dataset collection level which is sufficient granularity to assign credit.

Traceability

The specific CMIP6 dataset granules used in the figure are referenced as related works via their Handle identifiers. 

Files containing the mappings between CMIP6 data collection DOIs and data granule Handle IDs are placed in the Zenodo record.

The mapping file formats are human-readable csv and machine-actionable json.

Impact

The Zenodo reliquary object, rich with related works metadata, is issued with its own DOI via Datacite.

The DOI connects the reliquary object itself and its myriad contents of related objects and their relationships to the wider PID graph landscape. 

 

The CMIP6 data landscape benefits from well-defined controlled vocabularies and a data referencing syntax (DRS). If ontological information is relied upon to build Handle IDs, then the ontology must also be referenced within the Zenodo reliquary object. 

 

In developing the Zenodo reliquary objects we have worked closely with the RDA Complex Citation Working Group and the NERC Environmental Data Service.

There is still work to be done to establish full visibility of credit referenced within the Zenodo reliquary records.  However, we hope to stimulate further work in this area and the engagement of the community by presenting our prototype solution to the complex citation challenge, one that has the potential to provide climate modelling centres with a route to a more complete picture of the impact of their simulations.