Quoting roles in data services

[Baptiste Cecconi]

Hi Stéphane, 

indeed, this is a bit of a tricky issue, since accurately acknowledging attribution or authorship is a key aspect of science ethics. 

My first answer is to clearly identify what contribution is attributed to whom. I mean: the EPNcore or ObsCore table metadata should be very explicit on what it is, and how to has been produced. The title and description has to be very clear on the content and the scope. 

With your example:
The EPNTAP service is a "Curated catalogue of planetary observations by HST". The EPNcore metadata has been produced by Erard, et al. The original datasets used to produce the metadata are provided by the NASA/MAST database (or any other that has been used).  

The metadata in the Registry concerns the catalog metadata, and should (must?) contain reference to the progenitor data if required, e.g., with relation like "is-metadata-for" linking to the DOI (or any identifier) of the original dataset (possibly included as a provenance statement)

So to me:
- the metadata of the EPNcore/Obscore table should relate to the metadata and not the original data,  
- the relation to the source data should be explicitly stated and presented, both on the service description, as well as in the registry metadata.
- the EPNcore/Obscore table landing page should propose explicit citation policies ("how to cite this metadata", "how to cite the underlying datasets")     

Cheers
Baptiste




> Le 2 févr. 2025 à 11:01, Stéphane Erard via semantics <semantics at ivoa.net> a écrit :
> 
> Hello
> 
> 
> I'm reviving an old request from the Solar System community but more general in scope:
> What are the common practices concerning references to data services? How do we cite creators of content (ie: data) vs services (ie, very often: a metadata table)? Can there be 2 different roles? - this is a recurring request from our providers, and a sensitive one.
> Example: I'm maintaining an EPN-TAP service identifying planetary data from the HST catalog. Creating the metadata table is a significant work which deserves identification and involves a responsibility; but I can't pretend I've created the data. How do I call my role there?
> 
> VESPA distinguishes 3 roles, following current practices: Creator, Contributor, Publisher
> But there is an obvious ambiguity with Creator that needs to be addressed.
> 
> Cheers
> Stéphane

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