IIIF Visual Resources #

External Visual Resources (VRs), which annostor can import if they are already supported by institutions, must be described by valid IIIF manifests. Alternately, if you have acquired digital imagery which is not currently available via a IIIF service, or you have digitised documents or objects yourself to produce new image files, then you can upload them to create new VRs using annostor—see below for a detailed explanation.

Developing research questions using scientific annotation #

Annotations can be downloaded as a JSON file via the annostor workflow for the respective IIIF manifest as you make changes, and you can also share a secure link with collaborators, to present annotations interactively against your source materials. However, to preserve your work in the long-term, and publish annotation collections as reusable datasets that other researchers can easily discover, annostor creates permanent records on your behalf in trusted repositories, and also mints PIDs that you can cite in other publications.

Open Repositories, such as the institutional infrastructures operated by InvenioRDM consortium members (see https://inveniosoftware.org/products/rdm/) guarantee long-term accessibility through internationally-agreed metadata standards and APIs. These organisations provide internet hosting supported by continual security maintenance, and development to comply with emerging standards and for ongoing functionality advances.

Create an annotation collection repository record and receive a DOI #

You need to be affiliated with one of these institutions to deposit new research records with their infrastructures, contact your repository administrator and help@annostor.org to set up WADM record creation. Alternately, annostor can publish a record in Zenodo for each of your annotation collections, and mint a new Digital Object Identifier (DOI) enabling you to cite and update them in the future. In order to preserve annotation collections using annostor you must first make an account in your institutional repository or in Zenodo. Zenodo is the global research data repository of OpenAIRE, which is operated by CERN on behalf of the European Commission. It implements an 'Open using annostor' preview, enabling you to see your annotation collection—regardless of where the visual resource is hosted. Your annotation collection (WADM serialised in JSON) is preserved by Zenodo and the VR is accessed automatically at the hosting organisation via its IIIF manifest, in order to present the annotations in the repository GUI.

You can configure your annostor account to publish in other repositories instead of Zenodo—contact help@annostor.org for assistance. You can also develop multiple research questions using the same visual resource—publishing multiple research records of annotations relating to the same or to multiple VRs in Zenodo or in other repositories. annostor asks you to define a title and include a description for each annotation collection; it links your ORCID and you can enrich these records independently in the future using the repository GUI, since annostor makes you the record owner.

Creating new IIIF Visual Resources #

If you have created a new IIIF manifest by uploading images using annostor, and then developed annotations—rather than importing the manifest of an existing Visual Resource (VR) that is already hosted online by a trusted institution—then annostor can create a new permanent VR for you. If you want to deposit the annotations in a repository, then annostor will first ask you to create such a VR.

If the image files making up your new manifest are together less than 1GB then, by default, annostor will create a new VR for you as a Zenodo record—asking you for a title and description in the same way as it does for an annotation record. Note that new VRs have to be accepted by Zenodo before being published, and annotation deposits against them cannot proceed until you've received confirmation that the VR is publicly available in the repository. This process normally takes less than 24 hours and annostor will send you a confirmation email using the address with which you registered your scholar.annostor account.

You can cite the manifest of the new VR in publications, as well as the PID of the record—contact help@annostor.org for guidance about citing new IIIF manifests and for support with compliance problems. However, note that new VR repository records are linked to your ORCID, and you should pay attention to copyright and hazardous imagery regulations.

If the image files for your new VR amount to more than 1GB (and manifests may have large numbers of canvasses, and individual images may be many MB), Zenodo will not routinely accept such VRs and annostor uses the scholar.hasdai.org InvenioRDM repository to create a permanent visual resource, including a general-purpose IIIF service which other applications globally can use.

hasdai is a program of CERN and Data Futures GmbH—see https://hasdai.org for more information. As with VRs deposited on your behalf with Zenodo, annostor will ask you for a title and description for the new record, and it will inform you when the record has been published and return a PID. Thereafter you can deposit annotation records against the new VR with Zenodo—or other repositories that you configure in your annostor account.

Permanent IIIF services #

The scholar.hasdai visual resource repository provides IIIF services for imagery and document records that can be used by any IIIF-compliant application, via the IIIF manifest of the record—identifed as a URL. This repository provides permanent IIIF hosting services for research materials created by scholar.annostor users only: is not intended for general-purpose research outcomes nor creation of new records by non-annostor users.

scholar.hasdai employs the InvenioRDM open repository software platform, and annostor creates an Invenio account for each user in this repository when they first publish a visual record. It also creates and maintains an Invenio Community for each user—ensuring that visual resources are easily discoverable. scholar.hasdai mints PIDs for each new resource and returns both the PID and IIIF manifest URL to the user's scholar.annostor account. The PID and URL can be used to cite the new visual resource in literature, and for publication using websites and other internet applications. In particular, the manifest enables any external IIIF-compliant application to reuse and embed scholar.hasdai resources in the long-term.

Controlled vocabularies #

scholar.annostor enables you to create and manage controlled vocabularies to manage annotation work efficiently and improve the impact and preservation of your research.

Controlled vocabularies improve the classification of annotations: they enable you to select pre-defined terms from a menu to protect against inconsistencies when (re)entering terms manually from the keyboard (e.g. varying capitalisation, punctuation, spelling). They also make it possible to search potentially large numbers of annotations and filter the ones you are looking for according to their content.

annostor provides flexibility to use existing vocabularies, which may already be published by international communities such as the Taxonomic Data Working Group in biodiversity, or to customise or create new ones for specific research activities.

Vocabularies are set at the annostor project level and they become accessible in the annotation workflow for all manifests in the project. You need to define and manage them for each project.

You can create, edit and name vocabularies as you go along, or select vocabularies that you have already developed. However, once you have started creating annotations in project, you cannot remove or edit the vocabularies accessible for its manifests—although you can add additional vocabularies.

scholar.annostor saves vocabularies in your personal account, and you can maintain and extend them for future use in multiple projects.