The Need to Simplify Indexing and Data Sharing - The Scholarly Kitchen

"The complexity of indexing and sharing data with repositories and other third parties is a barrier to change for smaller operations. Managing metadata agreements, setting up data feeds, and adding metadata is a time-consuming task, but a necessary cost of doing business. That said, once you realize the time commitment for each exchange or agreement, you may, by nature, become conservative.

The more complexity you take on, the higher the risk and cost. Further, by setting up these technical connections, the thought of someday – eventually- moving platforms or content management system becomes increasingly difficult and expensive....

The following three examples point out the unnecessary complexity of scientific publishing. ...

We need to flip the current system of submitting data to instead facilitate third parties’ ability to easily gather the data they need. Instead of trying to simplify current standards and give each journal new work, it is the small group of receivers who should change.

The current receivers should fetch the data they need instead of each journal creating and sending data. Economically, it’s a simple choice: Let a handful of indexing and data collectors change their input systems instead of having a whole industry try to agree and then change thousands of systems...."