Scholix: A Framework for Scholarly Link eXchange

The goal of the Scholix initiative is to establish a high level interoperability framework and guidelines for exchanging information about links between scholarly literature and research data. It enables an open information ecosystem to systematically understand the data that underpins literature and literature that references research data. Scholexplorer is the first aggregation and query service to build on the Scholix open information ecosystem. The Scholix framework, together with the Scholexplorer aggregator, is designed to enable other 3rd party services (domain-specific aggregators, integrations with other global services, discovery tools, impact assessments, etc.)
Scholix is an evolving lightweight set of guidelines to increase interoperability. It consists of:
  • A consensus among a growing group of publishers, data centres, and global/domain service providers to work collaboratively and systematically to improve exchange of data–literature link information.
  • An information model: a conceptual definition of what a Scholix scholarly link is.
  • The link metadata schema: a metadata representation of a Scholix link.
  • Options for exchange protocols.
Scholix is an organisation-to-organisation exchange framework, implemented by existing hubs or global aggregators of research data–literature link information such as DataCite, Crossref, OpenAIRE, and EMBL-EBI. These hubs in turn work with their communities of data centres or literature publishers to collect the information through existing community-specific workflows and standards. Scholix thus enables interoperability between a small number of large hubs, and leverages the existing exchange arrangements between those hubs and their communities (e.g. between Crossref and journal publishers).
Scholix is a technical solution for wholesale information aggregation; it needs to be complemented by other policy, practice, and cultural change advocacy initiatives. Its approach could be extended over time to other types of research objects in and beyond research (e.g. software or social media).