Governance Group minutes 2020-12-11

Friday 11 December 2020, 11:00

Attendees: Petr Knoth (PK), Mick Eadie (ME), Paul Walk (PW), Nicola Dowson (ND), George Macgregor (GM - Chair),

Actions arising this meeting

One action was arising from the previous meeting.

GM to collate agreed profile changes for circulation and review of RGG members, and for PW to update the RIOXX GitHub repository.

GM confirmed that this action had been completed some months ago and that PW had updated the GitHub repository accordingly. GM reported that he, PW and PK subsequently held a call in September to make arrangements for drafting the new RIOXX profile. GM confirmed numerous updates had been pushed to the GitHub development branch and reported that, while completion of the new draft was imminent, a number of issues came to light during drafting which warranted further discussion by the RGG. GM noted that this would form the principal business of the present meeting.

PW reported he had been in further discussions with members of COAR following the RGG decision to adopt the COAR Controlled Vocabulary for Resource Type Genres V2.0. Changes in the maintenance and editorship of the vocabulary were by PW as imminent and that the intention was for COAR to issue a revised vocabulary in early 2021, one that extends the vocabulary's treatment of practice-based, creative and arts related outputs. This was considered a welcome development by RGG members given previous attempts by RIOXX to better accommodate non-standard academic outputs.

Minutes of last meeting

RGG members were satisfied with the minutes of 17/06/2020.

New RIOXX draft: walk-through

GM took RGG members through updates to the latest RIOXX draft profile documentation, highlighting those properties which warranted further discussion.

dc:identifier

During updates to the draft profile it was noted by GM that the RIOXX use of dc:identifier may merit reconsideration in order to better accommodate different 'expressions' of essentially the same work, e.g. PDF, JATS, Word, etc. GM reported that in v2.0 the convention was that a separate RIOXX record should be generated in order to accommodate alternative formats. RGG members agreed that this had been necessary in the past but was now worthy of revision. GM proposed dcterms:hasFormat as a possible solution but, following discussion, it was felt by members that a file inventory listing relevant related files might be of more use to aggregators. Owing to the complexity of the issue -- and PW's remit as Director of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative -- PW suggested that he reflect and document the issue so that the implications of any decision are properly considered.

  • Action: PW to document issues surrounding dc:identifier and -- following liaison with DCMI -- report back to the RGG.

rioxxterms:publication_date

Following the previous decision to continue rioxxterms:publication_date as a free-text element to enable the capture of opaque publication dates (e.g. Spring 2021, Winter 2020, etc.), it was confirmed by ND that she had identified REF 2021 submission guidance for the expression of such dates. Such guidance could be re-used in RIOXX to control the expression of publication dates. GM noted that this enabled ISO8601-2004 compliant dates to be used in the revised profile, obviating the need for this to be a free-text element. RGG members agreed that the REF approach be incorporated within the new draft, with months recorded as per:

  • 1 = winter (beginning of year)

  • 4 = spring

  • 7 = summer

  • 10 = autumn

  • 12 = winter (end of year)

  • Action: GM to update documentation for rioxxterms:publication_date in the draft profile to reflect the aforementioned decision.

rioxxterms:author

RGG members had previously agreed that RIOXX would not yet accommodate the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy. GM opined that there may be some merit in including a note in rioxxterms:author that the RGG were conscious of CRediT developments and that its accommodation would be reconsidered in future drafts. It was agreed by RGG members that the profile should not provide this commentary and instead such commentary should be included in the profile's accompanying documentation.

PW noted that CRediT was no longer under the editorship of CASRAI and instead will be maintained by NISO.

Dissemination & Communication Plan

As the revised profile was close to publication, GM proposed the RGG consider how it wished to communicate RIOXX to relevant communities of practice. There was agreement that there needed to be an opportunity for further community feedback upon official publication of the revised profile (i.e. v3.0), perhaps several months. ME noted some of the email lists that should receive notification of RIOXX v3.0 publication and which would likely inspire community engagement (jisc-repostitories, UKCORR, OA-good-practice). PW highlighted the importance of the RIOXX blog and GM indicated that social media engagement would be key. GM questioned whether a paper, whether self-published or otherwise, might be helpful; providing a document which could be pointed to in blogs, social media, etc. and which would communicate the RIOXX motivation. PW indicated that UKSG Insights may provide a suitable destination for such a paper.

AOB

GM confirmed that final changes to the draft profile would be completed in early 2021 and that he would notify RGG members so that additional scrutiny could be exerted prior to official publication.

GM drew the meeting to a close. No other business was raised by members.

DONM

To be confirmed after completion of the revised profile.

GM 05/01/2021