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"A lack of cost- effective information flow is a root cause of growing reporting burden on researchers and their institutions"
TOWARD A ‘STANDARDS STACK’ FOR INTEROPERABILITY
By David Baker, Executive Director, CASRAI and Board Member, EuroCRIS
Our common interoperability challenges are becoming a growing problem. The problem spans the entire research enterprise. It is not limited to research information management systems but also reaches scholarly communications systems. It also affects the ancillary systems we need to connect with (HR, finance, etc) to do our work. A lack of cost-effective information flow is a root cause of growing reporting burden on researchers and their institutions. It is also a root cause of a growing challenge for research funders as they try to use information to beter understand the results of their investments.
The most complete definition of interoperability is included in this article: htp://
www.ariadne.ac.uk/ issue24/interoperability: “To be interoperable one should actively be engaged in the ongoing process of ensuring that the systems, procedures and culture of an organisation are managed in such a way as to maximise opportunities for exchange and re-use of information, whether internally or externally.”
Standards are the best solution. Standards (disambiguated below) are a way of solving our interoperability problems in the most cost-effective, open and sustainable manner available. Without standards in your national interoperability infrastructure you are forced to either all adopt the same software or root storage model or, alternatively, to write and maintain custom bilateral mappings between software instances. Neither approach (alone) is cost-effective, sustainable, or innovation-friendly (ie anti-monopoly). Standards come in different flavours. The traditional
concept of standards are the ‘formal’ flavour. These are developed in long cycles under the auspices of nationally accredited standards bodies. Formal standards development is best suited to subject mater that is highly stable and well-known and likely not to change very often. A relatively new (since the Eighties) flavour of
standards are the ‘consortial’ flavour. These standards are developed and set by a consortium of leading stakeholder organisations in a community; using stable but less-formal approaches. This alternate approach arose to fill a gap in formal standards development in cases where the subject mater requirements were still in flux and changing frequently. They are seen as a more flexible and rapid solution to standards-seting in a seting of dynamic change. No single standard is a complete solution. There
are different consortial/informal standards, some competing in the same space but most complementary and modular. In the research and scholarly information space in the UK there are at least three key standards initiatives that can play an important role and that are complementary and non-competing. euroCRIS and their CERIF standards for storage and exchange; ORCID and their standards for uniquely identifying persons and resolving IDs to research activity; CASRAI and their standard terminology and profiling platform. In a single ‘standards stack’ we therefore have the key ingredients needed for standards-based interoperability:
Agreement on how we define and contextualise our policy requirements for information (CASRAI) Agreement on how we identify people and link to their works (ORCID) Agreement on our storage and exchange technology (CERIF)
An integrated approach helps stabilise a national strategy on interoperability. While good value is still present while these standards organisations operate independently on their respective ‘pieces of the puzzle’ there could be greater efficiencies and returns-on-investment if the organisations formalised an ability to work together seamlessly in an integrated workflow on those projects that are ready to pilot a standards-based approach as the best solution to interoperability problems. UB
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