Bridging the divide: The integration of scientific data and journal literature

CHED 191

Barbara Losoff, barbara.losoff@colorado.edu, Science Library, University of Colorado at Boulder, 184 UCB, Norlin Library, Boulder, CO 80309-0184
The sciences are disciplines largely driven by facts or data (Seringhaus and Gerstein 2007). Historically scientific databases and scholarly articles have operated as discreet units, with databases mostly seen as providing ‘background' to the journals ‘foreground'. The advent of large-scale digital repositories along with the need for sharing useful data world-wide, demands change to the current information structure. The integration of digital scientific data with scholarly literature has the potential to actualize semantic web design principles, creating “a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange” (Wikipedia). This presentation will review the current literature; identify factors leading to integration, and discuss the future format of journals and databases and how such a transformation will ultimately benefit scientific research.