Managing Scholarly Metadata: Creative Solutions to Pervasive Problems
Date: September 24, 2026
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm ET
Research organizations frequently make use of scholarly metadata (i.e. data describing research outputs) to assess, express, and optimize the impact of their research. In recent years, the number of tools and services dedicated to the management and analysis of this metadata has ballooned (including new bibliometric databases, researcher profile systems, and AI-driven analysis tools).
Even as these tools claim to expand the utility of scholarly metadata for research impact, they tend to understate some of the pervasive complexities of working with this kind of data, including challenges with inconsistent data standards, name ambiguity, and variability in coverage / granularity.
In addition to facilitating a conversation about the current state of scholarly metadata in the bibliometrics and research impact community, this session will highlight three real-world research impact projects that employed creative solutions to the scholarly metadata management challenges presented above:
Sabrina Kirby (McMaster University) will discuss the challenges of mapping broad scholarly metadata to more granular institutional structure within a Research Information Management System (RIMS).
James Shelley (Western University) will discuss a project that uses open scholarly metadata and persistent identifiers to power unit-based research newsletters and podcasts. Additionally, we’ll look at an operational proof-of-concept for automating the mapping, predictive scheduling, and metadata changes associated with research funding across competition cycles.
Loida Pan (NYU Langone Health) will explore a generative AI-based approach to maintaining a faculty publication database.
This session is presented by the CARL Bibliometrics and Research Impact Community of Practice. Presentations will be delivered in English, with automated live translation available in French.