Academic Observatory Workflows provides Apache Airflow workflows for fetching, processing and analysing data about academic institutions.

Telescope Workflows

A telescope a type of workflow used to ingest data from different data sources, and to run workflows that process and output data to other places. Workflows are built on top of Apache Airflow's DAGs.

The workflows include: Crossref Events, Crossref Fundref, Crossref Metadata, Geonames, OpenAlex, Open Citations, ORCID, PubMed, ROR, Scopus, Unpaywall and Web of Science.

Telescope Workflow	Description
	The Crossref Funder Registry is an open registry of grant-giving organization names and identifiers, which can be used to find funder IDs and include them as part of metadata deposits. It is a freely-downloadable RDF file. It is CC0-licensed and available to integrate with your own systems. Funder names from acknowledgements should be matched with the corresponding unique funder ID from the Funder Registry.
	Crossref is a non-for-profit membership organisation working on making scholarly communications better. It is an official Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Registration Agency of the International DOI Foundation. They provide metadata for every DOI that is registered with Crossref.
	OpenAlex is a free and open catalog of the global research system.
	ORCID is a non-profit organization that provides researchers with a unique digital identifier which eliminates the risk of confusing an identity with another researcher having the same name. ORCID provides a record that supports automatic links among all the researcher's professional activities.
	PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally.
	ROR is a global, community-led registry of open persistent identifiers for research organizations.
	SCOPUS is an Elsevier bibliometrics database containing abstracts, citations, of journals, books, and conference proceedings.
	Unpaywall is an open database of free scholarly articles. It includes data from open indexes like Crossref and DOAJ where it exists. Data comes from “monitoring over 50,000 unique online content hosting locations, including Gold OA journals, Hybrid journals, institutional repositories, and disciplinary repositories.

Documentation

For detailed documentation about the Academic Observatory see the Read the Docs website https://academic-observatory-workflows.readthedocs.io

Installation

Install using pip. From the root directory:

pip install -e ./academic-observatory-workflows[tests] --constraint https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/airflow/constraints-2.11.2/constraints-3.10.txt

Deployment

These instructions show how to deploy the workflows to Google Cloud and Astronomer.io.

Prerequisites

You should have set up the following resources already:

• A Google Cloud Project.
• A Google Cloud Shell instance, which pre-installs gsutil, gcloud and kubectl.
• A GKE Autopilot Cluster.
• An Astonomer.io Airflow deployment, using Google Cloud.
• Installed the Astronomer.io CLI: https://www.astronomer.io/docs/astro/cli/install-cli
• Installed yq: https://github.com/mikefarah/yq (don't use sudo apt install yq, it installs the wrong tool)

The GKE Autopilot Cluster, Astonomer.io deployment and the Google Cloud buckets (that you create with the below script), should all be in the same region. The Cloud Storage buckets should be in a single region, not a dual or multi region, otherwise you will pay network costs for replication.

Setup Google Cloud Project

In a Google Cloud Shell, run the following script to set up your Google Cloud Project:

./bin/setup-gcloud-project.sh gcp-project-id gke-cluster-name gke-namespace gcp-download-bucket-name gcp-transform-bucket-name

The script outputs information that you need for subequent steps:

• AO Astro Service Account: required to set up the 'Customer Managed Identity' in Astronomer.io.
• Kube Config Path: required to configure the gke_cluster Airflow Connection.

If you are using additional buckets, then you can enable GKE and or Astro to access them with the following command:

./bin/setup-bucket-permissions.sh bucket-name service-account-email

Astronomer.io Customer Managed Identity

The AO Astro Service Account needs to be attached to the Astronomer.io deployment as a "Customer Managed Identity".

Please follow these steps to set it up: https://www.astronomer.io/docs/astro/authorize-deployments-to-your-cloud/?tab=gcp#setup

Step 6 is not necessary.

Astronomer.io Airflow Variables and Connections

The Airflow workflows are configured with a config file that is stored as an Airflow Variable. Copy config-example.yaml to config-prod.yaml and customise the settings.

Then deploy your config with the following command:

./bin/deploy-config astro-deployment-id gcp-project-id config-prod.yaml

You will also need to create the following Airflow Connections, depending on what workflows you are using:

Connection ID	Type	Login	Password	Host	Namespace	Kube config (JSON format)	Notes
aws_openalex	aws	required	required				OpenAlex Telescope
aws_orcid	aws	required	required				ORCID Telescope
crossref_metadata	http		required				Crossref Metadata Telescope
oa_dashboard_github_token	http		required				OA Dashboard Workflow
oa_dashboard_zenodo_token	http		required				OA Dashboard Workflow
scopus_key_1	http		required				Scopus Telescope
unpaywall	http		required				Unpaywall Telescope
slack	slackwebhook		required	required			Enables failure notifications to be sent to Slack
gke_cluster	kubernetes				required	required	Enables communication with the GKE Autopilot Cluster. Required for Crossref Metadata, OpenAlex, PubMed, ORCID and Unpaywall.

Kubernetes Secrets

Kubernetes Pods can't access Airflow Connections, so some workflows that need access to secrets, need them to be stored as Kubernetes secrets as well. You can create them with the below commands.

Create Unpaywall API key secret:

kubectl create secret generic unpaywall \
  --from-literal=api-key=value \
  --namespace my-gke-namespace

Create Crossref Metadata API secret:

kubectl create secret generic crossref-metadata \
  --from-literal=api-key=value \
  --namespace my-gke-namespace

Deploy code to the Astronomer.io deployment

To deploy the project to Astronomer.io:

./bin/deploy.sh gcp-project-id astro-deployment-id