Living Sources in Lexical Description

This is a protected page.

General ideas about the Living Sources concept

Motivation: Why do we need a Living Sources concept?

current situation:

scientists do not disclose research data. They do not publish them because of:

• quality reasons (data collection is not finished, is not completed, etc.)
• fear of plagiarism
• scientific recognition is not clear
• publication of methodology of collection

Solution:

• securing of scientific recognition and citability
• incremental publication possible

New possibilities:

• comments on individual datapoints (discussion)
• open peer review scheme

Strategy/How to proceed

• Bottom up identification of a field that is in need of a concept like Living Sources (science driven!)

What qualifies the Living Sources idea?:

• High level quality
• Support from scientists
• Editiorial board (technical checks, organisation of field)
• Peer review (content check)
• bonus: already various material available, but not (no start from scratch)

Two complementary scenarios:

• Build-up of a technical infrastructure which enhances the usability of datasets (one stop shop, comparability, searchability, persistence, etc. Envisioned user group: scientists who look for a hosting environment)
• Standards of interoperability of data portals/journals/archives with a common seach engine/browser-like tool (envisioned user group: scientists who want to keep a strong hold on their data)
• Persistance of data is secured for data submitted to the system (grid-like backup)

Living Sources in Lexical Description

First implementation of the Living Sources concept

Scientific scope

• Lexical data, view on language description and analysis
• Linguistics (Psycholinguistics, Ethnolinguistics, Lexicography, Terminology, Dialectology, Computational Linguistics)

Infrastructure

Technical issues:

• Formats (TMF, LMF, TEI/dic.)
• Technical infrastructure: Lexus (MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen), eSciDoc
• Unique identification of data objects
• Direct reusability of data (local databases, linking of databases)
• Formats for commentaries
• Formats for orthography profiles
• Citation structure (receipts, recipy, granularity)

Means

Needed man-power: Lexical Curator

Functional specification/Requirements

Submission:

Required information, seen as a preface:

• scientific background/research field
• editorial background/rational of the data
• selection criteria: e.g. sampling, fields, etc.
• data category/use of data: e.g. ODD specification, schema, specification of orthography, terminology specification etc.
• links to other databases/sources

Required informtion about the data itself:

• upload vs. URL
• upload on Lexus
• fulltext/XML
• webservice

Concept of an open submission and peer review

step 1: Technical check (by editors)

*(possibly closed) submission to editors *editorial check on technical issues (data structure, terminology, preface, etc.) *possible retraction for scientific check *data remain submitted (possibly with restriced access) *these steps can be iterated (each iteration should be time-restriced)

step 2: Content check (by peers)

*open peer-review submission (time-restriced) *critical assessment about submission as a whole (i.e. commentary on preface, not on individual entries) decide on acceptance. Should be seen separate from commentary on individual entries of the data.

       *individual errors/shortcomings can and should be corrected, but should not ban possible publication.

*result: publicated database meaning "the principle of collecting and organising data is good, though there might be discussion about individual items" *different publication status: e.g. "wordlist", "wordform collection (including frequencies, collocations, etc)", "wortfeld", "language-particular dictionary", "comparative dictionary"

step 3: living commentary and growth of data

       *addition of more data, corrections, versions

*discussion about individual items (not time-restricted)

Peer reviewing

(coexistent of different versions)

• Version 0 (not peer reviewed) should be handled like a preprint and should already be published
• branding by peer reviewed version
• publishers version

• open peer review
• peer review treated as a commentary
• 2-steps-process/focus on 2 criteria:

1. editorial criteria: technical check of coherence, completeness, and homogenity of the sample
2. scientific criteria: check for inventiveness, added value, and quality of scientific contribution (done by scientific committee)

Open issue:

• check if Living Reviews infrastructure for the peer review process can be re-used
• need of a sampling strategy on the data

1. sample of full entries
2. full overview of specific fields (e.g. all parts of speech, all etymological fields)

Rights

• Open Access
• Creative Commons Licence for data and metadata (by default: attribution)
• No copyright transfer
• agreement with authors that Living Sources in Lexical Description has the rights (to store) and distribute the data under the Creative Commons Licence

Miscellaneous

• possibility of third party commentaries by any registered user

Support

• Potential scientific support from MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig and other Max Planck Instituts
• Potential financial support: ESF call BABEL, Volkswagenstiftung, Heinz-Nixdorf-Stiftung

Other

• applied for domains livingsources.org, livingsources.com, livingsources.eu (request processed by AEI Potsdam)

Text Encoding Initiative

Max-Planck-Institut

Enhanced Scientific Documentation

One Documents Does it all

Uniform Resource Locator

Extensible Markup Language

Albert Einstein Institute