OAI-PMH protocol and Federated Information

Abstract

The Open Archives Initiative movement using the OAI-PMH protocol has allowed the production of federated digital libraries that provide wide aggregation of scientific production, creating conditions for the construction of important databases that enable the development of bibliometric research, scientometric, social network analysis and other modes of analysis. As a privileged means for evaluating and identifying patterns of information production in different scientific communities, federated digital libraries can be used as a source to study these communities. The construction of these databases involves several steps, beginning with the way information should be structured by local libraries, shared in a network environment and synthesized in order to ensure an integrated view of information. Relevant questions on the quality of such data directly impact on the possibilities of scientific analysis. We present here the foundations of how that information architecture has been implemented in the construction of the portal Univerciencia.org, which is focused on the scientific production of Communication Science, as well as the technologies involved, the ways of structuring metadata and the first results of analyzes of the data collected and  their metadata quality.