Area: Border Crossing and Inter-Area
Stream: Library Science
Presentation Type: Panel Presentation
Panelists:
Yumi Kitamura, Kyoto University, Japan (organizer, chair)
Kiyonori Nagasaki, International Institute for Digital Humanities, Japan (presenter)
Nobuhiko Kikuchi, Kansai University, Japan (presenter)
Chifumi Nishioka, Kyoto University, Japan (presenter)
Narumi Shitara, Kyoto University, Japan (presenter)
Abstract:
With the rapid increase of accessibility to both historical and contemporary resources online, the research methodologies and even the research questions in social science and humanities have been changed drastically over the last decade. Asian Studies is not an exception. Pieces in rare collections in libraries with very limited access such as Buddhism manuscripts are now shared online via new platform for images, IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), along with the text database. It is now coming to the stage to facilitate open science in Asian Studies. One way of initiating open science is a promotion of open participatory researches by utilizing the open access resources.
In addition to these resources, the research outcomes are shifting towards the open access publications. However, only the limited number of open access publication provide open citation in the field of Asian Studies. The promotion of citations is an urgent task in order to assure the traceability of open access resources online and contribute to further development open science in Asian Studies.
This panel examines the current practice of open access and open citations in Asian Studies in Japan by presenters consisted of scholars of Buddhism studies, digital humanities, information sciences, and an academic journal editor. Through the examination of cross disciplinary presenters, the panel proposes the possible approaches towards open science in Asian Studies.
Panel Abstracts:
Buddhist Studies with Open Science: An Attempt in Asian Studies
Open Science has gradually been spreading among Asian studies. In the field of Buddhist studies, such activities have been addressed along with the movement of digitization of research tools and materials. This presentation reports current situation of the activities through activities of the SAT Daizokyo Text Database Project (henceforth, SAT). Recently, IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) has been adopted in different cultural institutions to facilitate mutual use of digitized cultural resources. Combination of IIIF and open license provides a new environment where any resources from various institutions can be freely utilized by third parties including researchers and other institutions. So far, a lot of different digitized resources have been released. For instance, the digital collection of National Library of France (i.e., Gallica) includes many East Asian resources such as Dunhuang manuscripts and they are used in Asia. Along with this context, SAT built a new system for Buddhist research in 2016. The current system enables researchers to leverage scholarly annotations to any resources on Web. For example, SAT contributed to improve metadata on the digital collections of Kyoto University as they use metadata that was created by researchers on SAT. It is a typical example of open science because openness in the technology and the license allows SAT to survey the digitized resources and the outcomes enrich the resources so that they will stimulate further research. In this way, IIIF and open license will open a new door for open science in Asian studies.
Promoting Open Science Movement of the East Asian Studies; On "Open" Strategies of the KU-ORCAS
Kansai University Open Research Center for Asian Studies (KU-ORCAS) aims to promote the East Asian studies and raise our university’s international profile through open science support programs. The East Asian Studies, especially Chinese historical and linguistic studies in this context, is the core field of our university. For stimulation to the studies in Japan, KU-ORCA is promoting several open science programs, which can be summarized into four concepts of “openness” and an open platform. The first concept is the provision of open access to research resources. This refers to the digitization and free provision of the East Asian materials at our digital archives. We provide metadata licensed by the CC0 and our collection data put the Public Domain Mark. It is the most important that we release the images complying with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) for user-friendly and stress-free usage. The second is the broadening of research groups. We are planning to collaborate a famous crowdsourcing system in Japan for transcribing digitized materials through which citizens can easily participate in our research. The third is the opening of research know-hows. We provide instructional YouTube videos that our faculties explain about their East Asia Studies. Furthermore, we will build a website to disseminate digital humanities research know-hows. The fourth is the opening of research works, in short this means open access of our research results. Finally, our open platform will provide a global search engine portal for East Asian IIIF collections to boost East Asian Studies in the world.
Open Citation for the Development of Asian Studies
Citation data is essential for different purposes, including research evaluation, understanding of research process, and constructing library collections. For these motivations, the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC) had been launched in April, 2017 and a significant amount of citation data has been made available. In this talk, we show the analysis of availability of open citation data in Japan. Open citation data refers to citation data, which is structured, separable, and open. We conduct the analysis using the citation data that has been made available by I4OC. The analysis reveals that while the percentage of scholarly articles with open citation data in the world is 24.22%, it is 18.86% in Japan. We find that low percentages for articles in the field of humanities as well as articles published long time ago. The status of open access of an article does not influence on whether it is with open citation data. In order to promote open citation in Japan, we need the following three things. First, we have to increase the recognition of open citation in scholarly communities. The percentage of open access articles in Japan is high (i.e., 82.77%). However, we find articles that intentionally close their citation data among them. Secondly, it is important to develop a framework to promote open citation using such as machine learning and crowdsourcing, because Japanese journals, especially in the field of humanities, do not have sufficient resources to organize citation data
Creating Accurate Citation Data for non-English Language Sources: Challenges and Ways Forward
Based on the experience of creating a small citation database comprised of 3,815 citations from 98 Japanese articles published in the journal Southeast Asia: History and Culture from 1986 to 2015, the paper discusses challenges and suggests three requisites to creating a robust database that can withstand various analyses. For journal editors citation data is used not only to analyze research trends in a specific field but also to consider what types of media are more useful for advancing research. Certain major abstract citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, however, are insufficient in capturing non-English language sources, exposing the need to create accurate citation data and databases for such sources. Challenges included difficulties in distinguishing between citations of academic and non-academic books and journals; standardizing citations of such sources as discussion papers, working papers, brochures, and the like; multiple citations of the same source resulting from citing from an edited book; variance in how authors list primary and secondary sources, and; inadvertently compromising accuracy when extracting citations from footnotes. Based on these experiences three points are suggested. First, an internationally standardized style and rules for referencing is needed. Second, accurate citation data should be created during the editing process by editors in cooperation with authors, who know the sources best. Third, editors should regard checking the accuracy and standardizing the presentation of all reference information as their significant task.
This panel is on Thursday - Session 03 - Room 1
Go to Room 1