ISIDORE is an online platform that allows research and access to

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

and

social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...

digital data Digital data, in information theory and information systems, is information represented as a string of Discrete mathematics, discrete symbols, each of which can take on one of only a finite number of values from some alphabet (formal languages ...

. It's a research assistant for humanists researchers over the world.

Detailed history and road map

ISIDORE was created in 2009 by the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

, using its "Adonis large equipment" facilities, with a major participation from french companies Antidot,

Sword A sword is an edged and bladed weapons, edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter ...

and Mondeca. It is now fully integrated to the Huma-Num research infrastructure for humanities and social sciences. Conceived by the ''TGE Adonis'' team following a study on the creation of a

portal Portal may refer to: Arts and entertainment Gaming * ''Portal'' (series), a series of video games developed by Valve ** ''Portal'' (video game), a 2007 video game, the first in the series ** '' Portal 2'', the 2011 sequel ** '' Portal Stori ...

in humanities and social sciences, the site was started in 2009 and offered in

Beta version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

from 2010. It was implemented by the Center for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD) with support from Antidot,

and Mondeca between 2010 and 2015. Piloted and operated directly by Huma-Num since 2016, the platform brings together a large number of data producers from around the world: electronic publishing platforms ( Cairn.info, Persée, OpenEdition Journals,

Érudit Érudit () is a Quebec-based non-profit publishing platform. Founded in 1998, it is the largest provider of Canadian French and bilingual research publications in the humanities and social sciences, as well as select physical and natural science ...

, etc. ),

digital libraries A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

( Gallica from the BnF, Mazarinum from the

bibliothèque Mazarine The , or Mazarin Library, is located within the Palais de l'institut de France, or the Palace of the Institute of France (previously the Collège des Quatre-Nations of the University of Paris), at 23 quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement, on t ...

bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a p ...

, bibliothèque inter-universitaire de médecine, etc.),

open archives An open repository or open-access repository is a digital platform that holds research output and provides free, immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use, download and distribute. To facilitate open access such reposito ...

( HAL-SHS, but also theses.fr, TEL, etc.) and a very large number of scientific databases produced in laboratories. The latest version, extensively redesigned in 2018 with the help of teacher-researchers, offers a connected space forming a vast scientific network. ISIDORE inspired several projects in the 2010 decade : in May 2019, TGIR Huma-Num and OpenEdition announced the European project TRIPLE which builds on Isidore philosophy and built on the same principles for OPERAS researchers. The Matilda portal follows in the footsteps of Isidore. In May 2024, Huma-Num IR*, which is developing it, announced a program up to 2030 enabling the development of ISIDORE towards the inclusion of generative AI.

Basic principles

ISIDORE harvests

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

and fulltext documents indexes them as

by enriching them with

scientific Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

terms and references (like thesaurus, taxonomies, etc.) in 3 languages: French, English and Spanish. It is edited as a web portal, isidore.science, an

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

and a

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced ":wikt:sparkle, sparkle", a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a Semantic Query, semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data sto ...

endpoint that allows access to enriched data in RDF. ISIDORE is available also like a WP plugin, called ISIDORE Suggestions.See https://fr.wordpress.org/plugins/isidore-suggestions/ ISIDORE is one of the digital platforms engaged in the sharing of scientific

open data Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...

and promote

FAIR A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Fairs showcase a wide range of go ...

Data. It currently contains over 7M documents, from more 10000 collections and sources (digital libraries, journals, academic blogs, open archives, scientific databases, archives, etc.), making it the largest open digital library for humanities and social sciences research.

How the portal works

Isidore harvests metadata according to three open metadata interoperability standards: *

OAI-PMH The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) is a protocol developed for harvesting metadata descriptions of records in an archive so that services can be built using metadata from many archives. An implementation of OAI ...

RDFa RDFa or Resource Description Framework in Attributes is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to HTML, XHTML and various XML-based document types for embedding rich metadata within web documents. The Resource Descript ...

Collected metadata is converted to RDF and enriched by IA and semantic processing with terms and vocabulary from scientific thesauri (specialized or general). The full-text documents linked to the metadata are indexed if they are freely accessible. Enhancements resulting from semantic processing are accessible both via the platform's website (search engine functionalities) and via its API to be used by software like

Zotero Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF and ePUB files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citatio ...

Sources

ISIDORE associates a large panel of scientific platforms and 'data producers': electronic edition platforms ( Cairn.info, Persée, Revues.org, Erudit, etc.),

: ( Gallica of the BnF, Mazarinum of the

, bibliothèque inter-universitaire de médecine, etc.)

( HAL-SHS (''Hyper Article en Ligne – Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société''), theses.fr, Thèses en Ligne TEL, etc.) as well as a large number of other scientific databases maintained by French and foreign laboratories.

References

{{Authority control French digital libraries