Springer Nature platform now holds a billion metadata statements

SciGraph, the linked open data (LOD) platform launched by Springer Nature in March, now holds more one billion metadata statements about content published by the company and links to established external datasets.

The LOD platform aggregates data sources from content published across Springer Nature. Its search and navigation functionality allows users to explore the connections between bibliographic metadata statements labelled by a range of categories including author, institution, fields of study, research grants, funders, conferences, locations. Citations, patents and clinical trials will be added this year.

The majority of these datasets are freely accessible and provided in a way that allows experts to analyse downloaded datasets using their own software, or by using the new SciGraph Data Explorer online. SciGraph has been developed to meet the needs of a variety of communities including metadata specialists, librarians, researchers and software and application developers.

Henning Schoenenberger, director of product data and metadata at Springer Nature, said: 'We know that researchers are motivated to find and use data but are often faced with challenges in doing so. By using initiatives like SciGraph, we can advance discovery and drive open research by supporting data accessibility directly.'

Michele Pasin, lead data architect at Springer Nature, added: 'We want to give these researchers and data specialists a tool that can be of great utility to their work, by breaking down data silos and revealing the relationships between metadata.

'For example, by using SciGraph they can see published data linked to a specific conference, a research grant or an institution. With over one billion metadata statements, this is now one of the world’s largest state-of-the-art scholarly linked data aggregation platforms.'