Patterns (Apr 2020)
Identifying Data Sharing and Reuse with Scholix: Potentials and Limitations
Abstract
Summary: The Scholexplorer API, based on the Scholix (Scholarly Link eXchange) framework, aims to identify links between articles and supporting data. This quantitative case study demonstrates that the API vastly expanded the number of datasets previously known to be affiliated with University of Bath outputs, allowing improved monitoring of compliance with funder mandates by identifying peer-reviewed articles linked to at least one unique dataset. Availability of author names for research outputs increased from 2.4% to 89.2%, which enabled identification of ten articles reusing non-Bath-affiliated datasets published in external repositories in the first phase, giving valuable evidence of data reuse and impact for data producers. Of these, only three were formally cited in the references. Further enhancement of the Scholix schema and enrichment of Scholexplorer metadata using controlled vocabularies would be beneficial. The adoption of standardized data citations by journals will be critical to creating links in a more systematic manner. The Bigger Picture: The number of research data repositories has substantially increased in response to growing requirements for publication of data supporting research findings. However, the lack of a common language between repositories and journals makes it difficult to find connections between datasets and articles and to identify secondary data-reuse cases. This study explores how the Scholix (Scholarly Link eXchange) framework can be used to create these links in order to validate research findings, to demonstrate compliance with funder mandates, and to understand the value and impact of research data. This is the first quantitative analysis of data gathered from the Scholexplorer API and demonstrates its potential for identifying data reuse. A content analysis of citing articles reusing data also shows that few of these links resulted from standard data citation practice. The findings of this study provide the basis for further comparative analyses to develop standard community practices.
