Signposting in DSpace is a technique designed to make scholarly web resources more accessible and navigable by machines. It uses typed links to provide clear patterns that help machine agents understand and navigate scholarly information systems. Here’s an overview of how signposting works in DSpace:
What is Signposting?
Signposting involves adding specific types of links to web resources to make them more machine-readable. These links are included in the HTTP headers or HTML link elements of web pages. The goal is to help machines, such as web crawlers and bots, discover and interpret metadata and relationships between resources more effectively.
How Signposting Works in DSpace
1. Typed Links: Signposting uses typed links to indicate specific relationships and metadata about a resource. These links can include information about authorship, identifiers, and related resources. For example, a link might indicate the author of a publication or provide a persistent identifier for the resourcehttps://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Signposting.
2. HTTP Link Headers: For non-HTML resources, typed links are provided in the HTTP Link headers. This allows machines to access metadata and relationships even if the resource itself is not an HTML pagehttps://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACECRIS/Signposting.
3. HTML Link Elements: For HTML resources, typed links are included in the HTML link elements. This makes it easier for machines to parse and understand the metadata embedded in web pageshttps://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACECRIS/Signposting.
Signposting Patterns in DSpace
DSpace supports several signposting patterns, including:
• Author: Links to the author(s) of a resource.
• Identifier: Links to persistent identifiers, such as DOIs.
• Publication Boundary: Links that define the boundaries of a publication, such as the start and end of a serieshttps://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACECRIS/Signposting.
Benefits of Signposting
• Improved Machine Accessibility: By providing clear and standardized links, signposting makes it easier for machines to navigate and interpret scholarly resources.
• Enhanced Interoperability: Signposting helps ensure that metadata and relationships are consistently represented, improving interoperability between different systems.
• Better Discoverability: Resources that use signposting are more easily discoverable by search engines and other automated systems, increasing their visibilityhttps://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Signposting.
Implementing Signposting in DSpace
To implement signposting in DSpace, we need to configure the appropriate settings and ensure that the necessary metadata and links are included in your resources.
By adopting signposting techniques, DSpace repositories can significantly improve the machine accessibility and interoperability of their scholarly resources, contributing to a more efficient and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) scholarly web ecosystem).
Extensions for bots
We have also extended DSpace to provide enhanced metadata with schema.org and enhanced metadata headers - e.g.
<link href="https://docs.prosentient.com.au/prosentientserver/api/core/bitstreams/a781b2ef-013a-4a72-9404-9ba0b4e991ec/content" rel="download" type="application/pdf" />
<link href="https://docs.prosentient.com.au/prosentientserver/api/core/bitstreams/2ff93217-3249-4f88-b2cf-b256ad30b1df/content" rel="download" type="" />
<meta name="dc.contributor" content="Keny Poudel" />
<meta name="citation_author" content="Keny Poudel" />
<meta name="citation_publication_date" content="2024-10-11" />
<meta name="dc.date" content="2024-10-11" />
<meta name="title" content="Implementing a full Journal authority in DSpace 7/8" />
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "Publication",
"name": "Implementing a full Journal authority in DSpace 7/8",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Keny Poudel"
},
"datePublished": " 2024-10-11",
"description": "",
"prepTime": "PT1M"
}
</script>