Transitive Credit and JSON-LD

Abstract

Science and engineering research increasingly relies on activities that facilitate research but are not currently rewarded or recognized, such as: data sharing; developing common data resources, software and methodologies; and annotating data and publications. To promote and advance these activities, we must develop mechanisms for assigning credit, facilitate the appropriate attribution of research outcomes, devise incentives for activities that facilitate research, and allocate funds to maximize return on investment. In this article, we focus on addressing the issue of assigning credit for both direct and indirect contributions, specifically by using JSON-LD to implement a prototype transitive credit system.

Best practices for replicability, reproducibility and reusability of computer-based experiments exemplified by model reduction software

“…The purpose of the CODE file is the listing of key meta-data on the associated software project. Initially, the idea of bundling code meta-data was proposed in [46] and formalized in [26]. The main intended purpose of this proposal was the assignment of transitive P r e p r i n t credit in software stacks utilized for scientific work.…”

Peer Review #1 of "Software citation principles (v0.1)"

“…[24] to obtain a DOI. Necessary metadata should then be included in a CITATION file [62] or machine-readable CITATION.jsonld file [38]. When software is not freely available (e.g., commercial software) or when there is no clear identifier to use, alternative means may be used to create citable objects as discussed in §6.9.…”

Software Citation Principles

“…It is not that academic software needs a separate credit system from that of academic papers, but that the need for credit for research software underscores the need to overhaul the system of credit for all research products. One possible solution for a more complete description of the citations and associated credit is the transitive credit proposed by Katz and Smith [33,38].…”

“…Developers can achieve this by, e.g., uploading a software release to figshare [15] or Zenodo [24] to obtain a DOI. Necessary metadata should then be included in a CITATION file [62] or machine-readable CITATION.jsonld file [38]. When software is not freely available (e.g., commercial software) or when there is no clear identifier to use, alternative means may be used to create citable objects as discussed in §6.9.…”

“…However, this is really analogous to how any research builds on other research, where each research product just cites those products that it directly builds on, not those that it indirectly builds on. Understanding these chains of knowledge and credit have been part of the history of science field for some time, though more recent work is suggesting more nuanced evaluation of the credit chains [11,38].…”