Scholarly resource linking: Building out a “relationship life cycle”

Scholarly resources, including publications, software, data sets, and instruments, are created in an iterative and interrelated fashion. Managing the relationships that exist among and between such resources is a central requirement for information systems. Practically, however, many scholarly resources exist online as discrete entities, divorced from other resources to which they are intimately related. A robust system for linking scholarly resources in a broad and sustainable fashion will have to navigate a set of complex and interrelated requirements. This paper presents results and insights from three different projects that focused on supporting more robust linkages among scholarly resources. The discussion details key technical and institutional challenges looking forward and backward in time across what might be considered to be a “relationship life cycle”: identifying, validating, characterizing, and preserving relationships. The goal of the paper is to help guide new research initiatives and operational services focused on integrating relationship information into the scholarly record.