Citation File Format update

[sdruskat]

This is re ACTION: All to open issues in GitHub to disseminate things they're working on as I had to miss the call unfortunately.

Progress

• Since the Force2017 hackathon I've re-modeled the CFF specs to fit the use case, i.e., providing (minimal) software citation metadata as per Software Citation Principles paper, and as discussed in #24, citation-file-format/citation-file-format#23. Stable version is 1.0.3 (awkward versioning, I know).
• Also built a validation schema
• Built a wee library mapping CFF to POJOs (http://github.com/citation-file-format/cff-reader-java/)
• The Netherlands eScience Center is looking into adoption for their own software repository

Plans

• Mini-workshop at CW18
• Expand the tools infrastructure, perhaps as part of further hack events
• Further develop specs to include a "meta" module which can represent everything that's in CodeMeta
• For my thesis, look at options for implementing transitive credit via CFF and/or other means

Headaches

• Although CFF IMHO is a valid intermediary solution between no/unstructured metadata and a more ideal implementation, I still can't shake the feeling it might be duplicating too much effort, especially vis-a-vis CodeMeta!
  Perhaps it's good in that it's providing a low-threshold entry into providing citation metadata at all, and CFF can be transformed into CodeMeta JSONLD anyway via the crosswalk? See notes:

  August: (in response to Dan's blog post) if we start parsing "soft" text based citations what will be the issues compared to using structured metadata? Dan: focussed on getting someone to do something, before they can do the right thing. As we can't wait to solve one bevore we solve the other.

Perhaps CFF (with crosswalkability) is a good starting point? Happy to discuss!

[moranegg]

Perhaps it's good in that it's providing a low-threshold entry into providing citation metadata at all, and CFF can be transformed into CodeMeta JSONLD anyway via the crosswalk? ... Perhaps CFF (with crosswalkability) is a good starting point? Happy to discuss!

i do agree that CFF with crosswalkability is a good starting point for software citation and we should continue the effort of crosswalking ontologies, because it's the key for a proper Rosetta stone.

I don't think we should force users to use CodeMeta, even if it is a good solution, it might not be suited to all software, sometimes it forces simplifications that can be misinterpreted.

Maybe, as we discussed during the FORCE17-Hackathon, we should take the example of CFF and provide a yaml version of CodeMeta.

[sdruskat]

Thanks.

As for a YAML version of CodeMeta, once I've completed the Meta module (current CFF is "Core"), CFF is basically that, sans linked data (which I need to look into). CFF-Meta will ensure 1:1 mapability to CodeMeta, if this is possible at all :).

[danielskatz]

While I agree that we shouldn't force users to do anything, and in fact, we cannot, I also don't really want to see us develop two different solutions to the same problem.

I think what @sdruskat says is CFF-Meta means we won't, which is good :)