Feature Request/Idea: Harmonization and simplification of the citation metadata block.

[johannes-darms]

Overview of the Feature Request
Harmonization and simplification of the citation metadata block.

What kind of user is the feature intended for?
(Example users roles: API User, Curator, Depositor, Guest, Superuser, Sysadmin)
API User, Curator, Depositor, Guest, Superuser, Sysadmin

What inspired the request?
The current citation metadata captures information about people or entities that are involved with a resource in different ways. The Author, datasetContact, contributor, distributor, depositor, and producer entities have slightly different properties but describe either a human or a legal entity with different granularity. While author and datasetContact can capture information about affiliation with a particular person, contributors cannot. This complicates data collection and data management.

What existing behavior do you want changed?

1. Extending the controlledVocabulary contributorType with the following properties: author, datasetContact, distributor, producer and depositor.
2. Extension of the none DataSetField contributor to include the union of the harmonized properties of author, datasetContact, distributor , producer, depositor.
3. Removal of the none DataSetFields author, datasetContact, distributor , producer, depositor with all sub-properties.

With this proposed change, all existing data can be migrated - without data loss - to the new representation. Alignment with existing standards will not be affected as the same information will be captured and stored. In addition, the adjustments to exports and visualizations are minimal, as only code to filter by a specific "contributorType" needs to be added. The main advantage is the harmonization of six objects into one, reducing the complexity of the data model and eliminating inconsistencies.

Any brand new behavior do you want to add to Dataverse?
none

Any related open or closed issues to this feature request?

[poikilotherm]

Hi @johannes-darms maybe you can drop by in Matrix chat or even better one of the community calls (today!) to explain your idea in more detail?

Most likely your ideas need more context and talking about them with people like our metadata pro @jggautier, our great CCO @pdurbin, the multi-hat-dev @qqmyers, our architect @scolapasta and many many others.

[pdurbin]

Good idea. People are people.

This issue is directly related:

• Citation Metadata: Add Affiliation and Identifier for Contributors #3048

These are somewhat more tangentially related:

• Feature Request/Idea: Incorporate CRediT vocabulary for author/contributor roles #8213
• Unresolved feedback from community review of Citation metadata fields #8467

[johannes-darms]

To sum up the idea:
Move from this:

to this representation:

[pdurbin]

Related:

• Feature Request/Idea: Allow an account to have multiple Affiliations. #9248
• Add ORCID to uploader/contributor of dataset #10087