Authority files: Breaking out of the library silo to become signposts for research information

Knowledge Exchange is exploring the rich field of research information in order to help our partners effectively achieve their objectives. To this end a group of experts collected examples of Authority Files, to demonstrate their working and immense value for information discovery and knowledge creation in the research process.

Authority Files or Controlled Vocabularies are lists of entities (publications, journals, data collections, organisations, etc.). The lists are uniquely identified by a number (identifiers such as ORCID for researchers, DOI for publications, ISBN for books, etc.) and contain information to characterise and qualify the entities (e.g. if a journal is Open Access, which researcher contributed to a specific project, etc.)
The lists are authoritative (maintained by an expert organisation, registry office, etcetera; or authoritative in itself being widely recognised and used by significant audiences, etc.) In this publication experts explain the beneficial value of Authority Files with regards to discovery, trust and reliability, accountability, transactional efficiency, for knowledge creation.

Download the publication: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=708