Open Scholarship&

How (should) Universities use Linked

Data

First of all... why use it in the first place?

Put data into RDF and all problems will be solved?

#1

RDF should encourage data to talk about real 'things' – people, places, items, etc

#2

Data within an RDF dataset can refer easily to other pieces of external data, as well as reference

other parts of itself.

However, this doesn't mean that data encoded in RDF is automatically “linked”.

Far, far from it.

#3

It should encourage them to have working, open URLs for the things that an institution cares about.

Like researchers, courses, and departments.

(However, all it takes is a few overly cautious committee decisions to kill the openness and the usefulness – cf Oxford University's BRII project)

What's an easy way for Universities to publish Linked Data right now?

Use Eprints 3.2.1 – supports Linked Data out-of-the-box

What comes first? The URI or the data?

What is all this leading to?

Open Scholarship

Open Scholarship is:

Open Access

- Open Theses

Open Bibliography

Open Citations/References

Open Data

Open Scholarship is:

Open Access

- Open Theses

Open Bibliography

Open Citations/References

Open Data

Open Access vs. Free Access

(or the ideal vs the reality)

Discussion point 1 – Should we try to reclaim the word Open from 'Open Access' sites?

Rebrand those sites with limited access as being 'Free Access' sites?

How can we get people angry about this?

'Open Access' rarely includes access to the peer review dialogue.

Should this be the case?

Open Bibliography

Aka “Why are we using more of the state's money to get updates of the list of works produced using

public money?”

JISC Open Bibliography Project, #jiscopenbib

http://openbiblio.net

Aims:

1) To find and put pressure on catalog owners to release their data under an open licence (as in the

http://opendefinition.org)

2) To aggregate the data into RDF and link it up, at least internally (eg making authors, publishers,

etc first-class citizens)

Current bibliographic datasets we are working on:

British Library's “BNB” - the British National Bibliography (approx 3m items)

Cambridge University Library's catalog (minus the OCLC-derived or purchased records)

IUCr's Acta Cryst. E

PubMedCentral UK/BioMedCentral

PLoS

The British Library and the recent -NC issue.

Whoops.

Cambridge University Library

So far, a set of 170,000 unencumbered records has been found.

(Mostly, these describe manuscripts and old, more unique material.)

We have also recently earmarked a further +1m records which might be released soon.

Open Citations

Aka “Let me easily review the items that an article references”

JISC Open Citations, #jiscopencite

http://opencitations.wordpress.com

Aims:

1) Persuade/badger/annoy content holders to release reference lists under a truly Open licence.

2) Provide that data as linked data, having de-duplicated and matched citation records to the things they reference (as much as is possible)

Currently this project is working with the same data providers as the JISC Open Bibliography project, with the notable addition of CrossRef.

CrossRef have been allowing publishers to optionally upload a reference list with their DOI

submissions to provide a 'Cited By' service.

Both the project team and CrossRef are in agreement that putting this data into the open is

the best way to make more services like this, driving more access.

(We're hopeful that the “carrot” might work better on publishers than the “stick”, due to the success

of CrossRef's 'Cited By')

There is a third aim of the Open Citations project...

To provide a means to record the purpose of citation – whether the article references, refutes,

or agrees with the item it cites.

Open Data

Aka “Sure, your graphs are pretty, but how do I know you didn't massage the data?”

Open Scholarship is:

Open Access

- Open Theses

Open Bibliography

Open Citations/References

Open Data

Discussion points:

Are all these necessary?

Is Open Peer Review necessary?

Do we need more things to be Open?

If all the data is made available in RDF (amongst other formats), should it be only exposed in a

SPARQL endpoint?

How do we get academics angry about copyright?