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Sustaining the swMATH project: Integration into zbMATH Open interface
and Open Data perspectives
Maxence Azzouz-Thuderoz, Moritz Schubotz and Olaf Teschke
1 Introduction
The swMATH database was launched in 2013 as the main result
of a joint 2011–2013 project of FIZ Karlsruhe and Mathemati-
sches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach supported by the Leibniz
Association, aiming to increase the visibility of research software
contributions in mathematics, as well as to provide quality measures
by evaluating the software usage in peer-reviewed publications
indexed in the zbMATH database [1,2]. Since then, the service has
been produced by FIZ Karlsruhe, further developed in collaboration
with the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) supported by the Forschungs-
campus MODAL [3–5]. Due to its history, the service has been, on
the one hand, closely connected to zbMATH, and, on the other
hand, it has been developed and maintained on a single, independ-
ent platform, which grew out of the initial project. This resulted in
both advantages (some features could be implemented independ-
ently) and disadvantages (full, and ever-growing, functionalities of
zbMATH could not be transferred easily to swMATH). We describe
here the new version of swMATH fully integrated to the zbMATH
Open framework, which has been made possible by the transition
to an open service [6,7].
2 swMATH as part of zbMATH Open transition
Since its inception, swMATH has been a free service, although
its publication part has always been based on data contained in
zbMATH, which was a subscription-based service until 2020. That
led to some restrictions in designing swMATH at that time: as
a general rule, only limited paywalled information was made avail-
able via swMATH. This resulted in a restriction of certain functions;
e.g., swMATH was not interlinked with the author and journal
databases of zbMATH, and the retrieval lacked the options of full
logical combinations of the various search elds. Moreover, and
perhaps even more unsatisfactory, swMATH was open access, but
not open data. On the other hand, the much reduced data allowed
for a rather lean, independent front-end implementation employ-
ing the Django framework. This facilitated the addition of some
small extra features.
With the transition toward zbMATH Open, the main obstruction
causing reduced swMATH functions became obsolete [6]. Simul-
taneously, in 2020/2021, a lot of internal preparatory work was
completed that allowed a more exible development, like the re-
placement of the indexing component or the migration of the code
to Python 3 [7]. While before the system had been quite specialised,
with a focus on bibliographic data, it became now much easier
to add additional layers. At the same time, the life cycle of the
Django-based software came to an end, making a replacement
necessary.
The natural next step of swMATH at this point involved three
directions of development: First, to make the swMATH data avail-
able through an API, adding a truly open data layer to the service
and enabling its use in various interfaces. Second, to establish
a fully integrated software facet within zbMATH Open. And third,
to provide an independent platform for features incompatible with
the integrated version. Here, we will mainly concentrate to report
on the rst two aspects.
3 Integrated functions available for software search
The search in the software layer of zbMATH Open allows now, as
in the case of the other search facets, any logical combination of
expressions in the various available search elds (software, name,
authors, classication, keywords, and identier are indexed) in the
one-line search. Likewise, wildcard search with * is now available.
Results are sorted in descending order by the number of articles
referencing a software package (default), or alphabetically. The
information for a single package is arranged in the detailed zbMATH
Open prole standard, as shown in the gure below.
The prole information contains not just all information familiar
from the old swMATH platform (though arranged in a different
manner), but also a granular and interlinked breakdown of the
publications using the software with respect to authors, journals,
and subjects. Furthermore, while the old swMATH platform had
just a static list of these documents, this is now directly interlinked
to the dynamic result page in zbMATH Open, where the results
can be further ltered, rened, or extended.
62 EMS MAGAZINE 126 (2022) — DOI 10.4171/MAG/118
Prole of SageMath software
The only drawback of this version is that the classical swMATH
contained also some additional references to documents not (yet)
indexed in zbMATH Open, as, e.g., from arXiv, which do not t
into this format, since they are not yet indexed with respect to
authors, journals, or MSC (Mathematics Subject Classication).
This information is, however, not lost, but will be on display in the
upcoming independent swMATH platform based on the MediaWiki
framework.
4 swMATH and API
As part of the FAIRCORE4EOSC project, the new independent
MediaWiki-based swMATH version will become an integrated com-
ponent of the European open science cloud (EOSC). By standardised
API specications such as [9, 10] OAI-PMH and CodeMeta [8],
swMATH data will become an integral component of the EOSC. This
contributes to ve of nine core components of FAIRCORE4EOSC.
1.
The EOSC Metadata Schema and Crosswalk Registry (MSCR)
aims to support publishing, discovery and access of metadata
schemata and provides functions to operationalise metadata
conversions by combining crosswalks. Through the new API,
research software programs and their metadata will be easily
accessible. This component will be exposed so that one can
use it to convert metadata of mathematical research software
to ease the querying process.
2.
For each mathematical software program, the EOSC Research
Software APIs and Connectors (RSAC) will ensure the long-
term preservation of research software. We will demonstrate it
easily, as the Software Heritage identier SWHID of the archived
project will be displayed on the new swMATH website.
3.
Moreover, swMATH will integrate to the EOSC PIDGraph, a
knowledge graph which improves the way of interlinking re-
search entities across domains and data sources on the basis
of PIDs (Persistent Identiers); this can play a key role in help-
ing applied mathematicians to identify the most convenient
mathematical research software programs.
4.
Standardised access to swMATH data is provided by integrating
swMATH in the EOSC PID Meta Resolver (PIMDR).
5.
Eventually, links between software and publications will also be
discoverable via the EOSC Research Discovery Graph (RDGraph)
which ensures that whenever a paper associated to a software
that is indexed in swMATH is found in the Graph, the link to
the software can be used in the EOSC context.
EMS MAGAZINE 126 (2022) 63
5 Conclusion and outlook
We outlined the new opportunities gained from the new integrated
swMATH version, which rst and foremost improves the situation
for mathematicians who frequently use zbMATH Open. Software is
now natively supported by the zbMATH Open website. At the same
time, we outlined how we will improve the accessibility to swMATH
data for researchers in Europe who are used to interact with the
European open science cloud. Everyone using the EOSC can benet
from swMATH data without even knowing that swMATH exists
or understanding the design of the swMATH website. Utilising
standards and processes developed in EOSC, the data will also be
an integral component of the common research data good within
Europe. Also, swMATH will benet from other EOSC data sources
that can be used to improve the quality of the service further. We
envision that the integration with the EOSC will also pave the
ground for manifesting the role of swMATH, among many domain-
specic aggregators for research software, as one that takes into
account the particularities of mathematics, and at the same time
takes advantage of the technology and methodological insights
and achievements from aggregators in different domains.
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Maxence Azzouz-Thuderoz joined FIZ Karlsruhe in 2022 to develop core
components of the European Open Science Cloud after many years
as a natural language processing engineer in the industry. His goal
is to make the swMATH database a connected resource of the EOSC
ecosystem. As a researcher, his main research interests cover natural
language processing, open science for mathematical software and recent
development in articial neural networks.
maxence.azzouz-thuderoz@z-karlsruhe.de
Moritz Schubotz is a senior researcher for mathematical information
retrieval and decentralised open science at zbMATH Open. He maintains
the support for mathematical formulae in Wikipedia and is an off-site
collaborator at NIST.
moritz.schubotz@z-karlsruhe.de
Olaf Teschke is managing editor of zbMATH Open and vice-chair of the
EMS Committee on publications and electronic dissemination.
olaf.teschke@z-karlsruhe.de
64 EMS MAGAZINE 126 (2022)
