Coming soon
Want to discover which research works are being shared, liked and commented on in social media? What about the number of times a scholarly item is referenced on Wikipedia or has a review published in F1000Prime?
We know that discussions around scholarly research often take place on the web outside of publisher platforms; for example on blogs, sharing services and social media. This activity is made up of a number of individual ‘events’ such as a bookmark, a comment, a social share, or a link. With tens of thousands of events occurring every day at a rate of approximately one per second, there’s a wealth of insight that can be derived by analyzing and interpreting this data. And we’re here to help you do just that.
Crossref Event Data, when launched, will collect and store this activity and make it available as a raw data record for anyone interested in getting a view of how content registered with us transverses the online world.
Our data is transparent and traceable, which means you will have access to information about the provenance and context of every event we curate in our service.
Crucially, Event Data will not be an end-user service and we won’t provide judgments or metrics. Instead we are focused on simply providing transparent raw data, which will give you a solid basis from which to make your own meaning.
Event Data is currently under development, with a launch expected in early 2017. But as we don’t like developing in the dark, our Event Data Query API is available for anyone interested in getting an early preview of the type of data we’ll make available in the final service. For more information on the API, take a look at our Event Data User Guide.
A word of warning though, our development process means that we like to break things often just so we can build them back better each time. So while we can’t guarantee the reliability of this early preview, it is a perfect aperitif for the curious.
If you have any questions or suggestions as we continue to work on the development of this service, please contact us.
The events in our service are mostly collected and curated by us from the data sources, but some are produced by our partners. There are three key components of our Event Data service.
The Event Data Query API provides an interface for accessing events. It’s a REST API that allows download of events and supports various filters.
Every event that Crossref produces has an Evidence Record. These are available through our Evidence Service, accessible via the Evidence API. This service provides the supporting evidence and relevent context for every event we curate.
Every component in the Event Data system, internal and external, is monitored. The Status Dashboard monitors all data flowing into the system, all parts of the processing pipeline, and the delivery mechanisms. It records the availability and activity of components and completeness of data.
If your organization needs an extra reliable Event Data service, then you may want to ask us about a service-level agreement.
Publishers and publishing platforms
By analyzing and interpreting our data collection, publishers or content distributors can use the event records to undertake metric-lead analysis to help drive their business needs.
General and altmetrics service providers
As we are a centrally-managed resource, third party vendors can collect real-time data from the one location to enrich, analyze, interpret and report via their own tools. Additionally, the optional benefit of an SLA with us means that we are a reliable and flexible source of data.
Bibliometricians
Bibliometricians can use our trusted raw data as the underlying data for their research. Our data is made easily accessible to researchers in a single, normalized format across a variety of sources. Additionally, as Event Data data is auditable, researchers will be assured that all data we collect is matched to the evidence and context from the source.
Journal editors
Editors can use our records to quickly find reviewers based on publication network analysis, identify new areas to grow author submissions and track the reach of submissions selected for publication. In addition, our records can help editor’s to attract authors by offering data on the audience’s research interest, track the full-scope of article dissemination and gain a better understanding of how the publications they manage compare to each other.
Funders
Funders can use Event Data to isolate and track the dissemination and usage of the research they funded outside of the scholarly literature.
Luckily, once a publisher registers content with us, we have a way of keeping track of it. Using an item’s Crossref DOI, we are able to find out when it has been saved, shared, liked, referenced or commented on in a range of different environments; from social sites like Twitter and Facebook, to reference and blog sites like Wikipedia and ResearchBlogging. We are also able to capture the links between authors, datasets and content items as they are added into the metadata deposited with DataCite and Crossref.
As the service matures, we will continue to connect with new data sources, ensuring our coverage of activity grows with time.
Take a look at our technical documentation in the Event Data User Guide and then plug into the Event Data Query API to get started. Please note that data currently available is not production ready and that specifications and documentation will continue to evolve as we progress through the development of this new service.
For membership questions, including arranging a service-level agreement, please contact Jennifer Kemp. For product development questions including being or requesting a new data source, please contact Madeleine Watson.