EBSCO introduces ‘Scholarly Graph’ linked data framework
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is introducing new ways for researchers to explore and evaluate scholarship through the EBSCO Scholarly Graph (ESG), a linked data framework that connects scholarly entities, including people, publications and topics.
By structuring relationships across hundreds of millions of records, ESG aims to enable researchers to uncover connections, trace impact and navigate the scholarly information network more intuitively. As a knowledge graph focused on scholarly content, it provides the foundation for new discovery experiences and future enhancements across EBSCO platforms.
ESG is built by aggregating metadata from trusted sources and enriching it with contextual relationships and standardised identifiers.
The graph contains nearly 900 million entities, including works, authors, organisations and topics, and more than 3.8 billion relationships, such as citations and authorship, modelled within the Builde ontology. Builde, a streamlined version of the Library of Congress’s BIBFRAME model, provides a flexible vocabulary for describing scholarly works and relationships. To ensure researchers have access to the most current information, ESG is updated daily.
The first set of new features powered by ESG, Citation Discovery, is now available in EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) and EBSCOhost. Citation Discovery helps researchers see how works are connected and understand their impact within the academic community. Citations demonstrate where and how often a work has been cited by other publications, helping researchers follow the influence of an article and see how scholarship develops over time. References display the sources cited within a work, allowing researchers to uncover authoritative studies that shaped their findings and to explore related scholarship with ease.
EBSCO Senior Vice President of Product Management, Discovery, UX & Platform Services, Timothy Lull, says ESG reflects EBSCO’s broader commitment to advancing research infrastructure: “Linked data is reshaping how scholarship is shared and understood. By building on open frameworks with the EBSCO Scholarly Graph, we are helping libraries and researchers navigate an increasingly complex information landscape with greater simplicity and transparency.”