Towards machine-actionable scholarly communication

Abstract

Ever since their emergence, both the products of scholarly communication and the supporting services have mainly targeted human users. Gradually, however, products are emerging that are more friendly for use by machines, or are even solely designed for them. The emergence of a machine-actionable layer of scholarly communication happens at different levels, and touches upon primary research results, research data, and the research process itself. The presentation will provide an insight in this ongoing evolution, and will provide concrete illustrations of this trend. It will also zoom in on research data as a new first class objects in digital scholarly communication, some of the challenges related to fully integrating this newcomer, and opportunities and challenges for libraries with this regard.